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TRIUMPHS 



ROOSEVELT 
ADMINISTRATION 



BY 

JOHN A. HOWI^AND 



WITH INTRODUCTIONS BY 

CHARLES DICK 

[senator from OHIO] 



CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW 

rspNAfpR FROM NEW YOKK] 



Chicago: 
republican publishing co. 

1904 



c^ 



LIBRA*? V <yf OONGPPSS 
Two GoDies Serfflved 

JUiM 23 -1904 
Ni Cooyrteht Entry 

CLASS X XXO. No. 

90 / S n 

* COPY B ' 



Copyright, 1904, by 
W. M. HANDY 



INTRODUCTION 



BY CHARLES DICK, SENATOR FROM OHIO 



Theodore Roosevelt will go down in his- 
tory as the man who has broken many 
(precedents in as thorough a manner as 
he is reported to have broken "bucking 
bronchos" in the West. He was nomi- 
nated for vice-president against his desire 
and over his vigorous protest. He was 
then governor of New York, an office to 
which he was elected on his war record at 
a time when the military enthusiasm grow- 
ing out of the war with Spain remained 
unabated, and under conditions which did 
not argue any too well for Republican 
success. As it was, the margin of victory 
was narrow. In the majority of instances 
in which a New Yorker has come to the 
presidential chair it has been by the death 
of the man who was elected president, and 
since the Republican party came into 
existence it has occurred twice through the 

3 



INTRODUCTION 

premeditated death of an Ohio man elected 
president. 

On that sad day on which his lamented 
and beloved predecessor passed away and 
Theodore Roosevelt took the oath of office 
as president, he promised faithfully to 
carry out the policies of McKinley. It is 
because he has been true to that pledge 
*ihat he will be nominated for president by 
acclamation in the Republican National 
Convention at Chicago. 

He is the first accidental president who 
has been so honored, and he promises to 
break precedent again by being his own 
successor. Our presidents have been sol- 
diers or lawyers, and Roosevelt is no ex- 
ception to that rule, though his military 
career was only a passing incident in a 
busy life, and his fame was won in an 
engagement which would have been count- 
ed one of the lesser battles of our civil war. 
That was not his fault, however, and he 
did the best he could. 

He has been distinctively a man of 
public affairs. Politics has been his voca- 



INTRODUCTION 

tion and literature his avocation. In the 
twenty-five years since he attained his ma- 
jority he has held office seventeen years 
and in addition was the unsuccessful 
Republican candidate for mayor of New 
York when he was twenty-eight years of 
age. 

His first appearance in national politics 
was that day in June, 1884, when he 
walked down the center aisle of the con- 
vention held at Chicago arm in arm with 
George William Curtis representing the 
State of New York after he had made the 
fight which cost President Arthur the sup- 
port of his own state. He was then a 
youth of twenty-six years. 

His contributions to literature constitute 
a small library. No man, therefore, has 
been more in the public eye in the last 
quarter of a century. In that time he has 
played many parts and has played them 
all remarkably well. In all of them he has 
displayed certain characteristics which 
have come to be known as distinctively 
Rooseveltian. 



INTRODUCTION 

He is the man of action, the man of 
jtrong elemental passions held under strict 
control, the man who always has a definite 
aim and is determined to bring about re- 
sults. He has the spirit of the pioneer 
and will hew a pathway of his own if he 
does not find one at hand. Where there 
is the will, he will find the way. Thus he 
has been enabled to do things and in all he 
has done he has been actuated by high 
moral motives. 

An aggravated and long drawn out 
strike in Pennsylvania had paralyzed the 
anthracite coal business and caused much 
suffering. Winter was approaching and 
there was prospect of untold misery be- 
cause of the failure of fuel. The consti- 
tution afforded no remedy and the state 
was powerless. The President was equal 
to the occasion. He went outside the con- 
stitution and by virtue of his position as 
first citizen of the land settled the strike. 
The country applauded and the trouble 
has not recurred. 



INTRODUCTION 

He found an irritating boundary dispute 
with irresponsible neighbors in the North- 
west which had vexed us for years. He 
adopted a common sense plan which he was 
told was impracticable, and lo ! the bound- 
ary dispute was settled and so satisfac- 
torily that while both sides claimed a 
victory, our interests were fully protected. 

He incurred displeasure by summoning 
Congress in special session to enact legis- 
lation demanded by our interest and our 
honor in order to carry into effect a com- 
mercial treaty with Cuba, failure to enact 
which, he declared, "would come peril- 
ously near a repudiation of the pledged 
faith of the nation. ' * The pledge was kept 
and that Cuban question is heard of no 
more. 

He brought the machinery of law to bear 
to oust the Northern Securities Company. 
It was not claimed that this merger oper- 
ated oppressively or that the interests of 
the people were suffering therefrom, but 
the President declared the law was being 
violated and thought it was unsafe to trust 



INTRODUCTION 

so much authority in any one set of hands. 
The courts sustained the President and 
gave new vitality to the anti-trust law. 
The supremacy of law was vindicated 
when applied to tremendous corporate 
interests as well as when directed against 
the most indigent offender. 

He has been equally vigorous and 
equally successful in his foreign policy. 
He has been firm and forceful whether 
dealing with petty misrule and organized 
anarchy in San Domingo, urging the just 
claims of Americans against the Sultan of 
Turkey, demanding the open door in Man- 
churia, or resisting European pretensions 
in South America. He has fixed more 
firmly than ever before the over-lordship 
of the United States in the Western hemi- 
sphere and written the Monroe Doctrine 
anew as the regulator of foreign interfer- 
ence in the affairs of the Americas. 

He was not afraid to make use of the 
opportunity to advance national interests 
in Panama. He followed precedent and 
acted within the strict letter of law and 



INTRODUCTION 

treaty, and by his wise foresight and 
prompt action insured the early commence- 
ment of the Panama Canal. The nations 
of the world approved his course, and 
American prestige abroad has been in- 
creased. 

Theodore Roosevelt is an American of 
Americans, broad and catholic in every- 
thing. He is healthy, robust and exuber- 
ant, and a man of universal interests. 
There is no branch of learning which does 
not attract him. His reading has been 
omnivorous. He is therefore interested in 
all men who have a message to give and 
he extracts the kernel from every man he 
meets. He is sometimes compared to 
Emperor William II. The Kaiser has 
reigned fifteen years and in that time the 
unexpected has always been looked for but 
never came. So the unexpected has been 
predicted from Roosevelt, but he has dis- 
appointed such anticipations. He is im- 
petuosity under splendid restraint. Clean 
himself, he demands the same virtue in his 
subordinates. An immaculate official 





INTRODUCTION 

record will not protect an official whom he 
discovers to be morally unclean. He makes 
no attempt to conceal his convictions, once 
fixed they are firmly held, for he believes 
in standing by his principles. He has high 
standards of civic righteousness and is a 
crusader for all that is clean and whole- 
some. He is unlike the Knight of La 
Mancha for he never runs at windmills. 
Many reformers are not practical. His 
much living outdoors has strengthened in 
him the grace of practicality and common 
sense. He has lived close to nature and has 
been in close touch with human nature. 
He therefore knows men, a knowledge 
which has served him well. 

He is not unmindful of the value of or- 
ganization, but relies much on appeals to 
moral sentiment. Since Andrew Jackson 
no such aggressive and forceful personality 
has occupied the White House. 



10 




WILLIAM H. TAFT, 
Secretary of War. 



PROGRESS DURING PRESIDENT 
ROOSEVELT'S ADMINISTRATION. 



BY CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW, SENATOR FROM NEW YORK 



There have been glorious decades in our 
national story from 1860 to 1900— saving 
the Union, emancipation, reconstruction, 
the resumption of specie payments— all of 
which loosened the energies of the Ameri- 
can people and bent American genius and 
industry to the development of our re- 
sources. The farseeing mind and the 
courage of our business men, the skill of 
our artisans, our farmers and our miners, 
have placed us in the front rank among 
the producing nations of the world. In 
the midst of prosperity never before 
equaled, of employment, markets and op- 
portunities never before possessed, we tried 
the experiment for four years of a new 
policy. From the ruin which involved us 
all, we emerged, under McKinley and 
Roosevelt. 



11 



INTRODUCTION 

Not only that, but more —we have re- 
paired the disasters from 1893 to 1897. 
We have opened the closed factories and 
mills ; we have built up new industries and 
removed every trace of the devastations of 
semi-free trade and unsound currency. 
The distress from putting into legislation 
false theories may be greater in our com- 
mercial and industrial age than those 
which followed in the track of armies in 
former generations. The task of the Re- 
publican party when it came into power 
with McKinley and a Republican Congress 
was to remove handicaps upon American 
enterprise and energy and furnish the basis 
for prosperity. The enactment of the 
Dingley law and the gold standard of 
value, in the wonderful results which fol- 
lowed in the South as well as the North, 
in the East as well as the West, was a 
fitting close to the contribution made to the 
greatness of our country" and the happiness 
of our people by the Republican party 
from 1860 to the close of the nineteenth 
century. 

12 



INTRODUCTION 

. There was one other measure required 
to enable the people to take advantage of 
conditions brought about by the Dingley 
tariff and the gold standard. A large pro- 
portion of our business men and corpora- 
tions had gone down under loads of debt 
which could never be lifted during the 
panic times from 1893 to 1897. We cleared 
the way for them to take advantage of the 
situation by the enactment of a general 
bankruptcy law, a law which has not been 
a vital necessity at the close of any Re- 
publican administration. It is the best 
tribute to the prosperity resulting from 
the measures which came after 1896, and 
to the inherent honesty of American busi- 
ness men that nine-tenths of those who 
were compelled to take advantage of this 
remedial measure, have since, in their 
abundant success, paid principal and in- 
terest of their indebtedness. 

But the nineteenth century closed, not 
only with phenomenal prosperity, not only 
with the balance of trade in our favor 
greater than the accumulated sum of all 
our previous history, not only with the 

13 



INTRODUCTIOX 

farmer, the 'manufaeturer, the artisan, and 
the worker happy and hopeful, but with 
all this accomplished notwithstanding a 
foreign war. In ninety days the conflict 
was over, and the republic was facing new 
and untried problems. It had the unrest 
of Cuba which had lasted for three hun- 
dred years upon its hands, the poverty of 
Porto Rico and chronic insurrections in the 
Philippines, but to-day Cuba holds an hon- 
orable place among nations, Porto Rico is 
lifted into healthful and prosperous condi- 
tions, iDsurrections have ceased in the 
Philippines, and their ten millions of peo- 
ple, with singular unanimity, are eagerly 
acquiring American education, liberty and 
law. This has been brought about by 
President Roosevelt. 

The problem of four hundred years 
seemed about to be settled and the two 
oceans united by the canal across the 
isthmus. "With the growth of our Pacific 
Coast States and the possession of our 
islands across the ocean and the trade of the 
Orient, the building of this canal became 

14 



INTRODUCTION 

a necessity of paramount importance. All 
other measures dwindled into insignificance 
compared with the opening of this high- 
way. The situation was intense and the 
changes dramatic. Colombia proposed to 
the United States a treaty called the Hay- 
Herran Treaty, naming the terms of the 
concession and asking for its ratification 
by the United States. The French Canal 
Company conceded to the modification of 
their proposal which our commission had 
recommended. The accomplishment of the 
desired result depended only upon the for- 
mality of the ratification by the Colombian 
Congress of the treaty proposed by their 
dictator and accepted by the United States 
when he had under the explicit terms of 
their constitution full powder to make it. 

But the dictator, now President, had 
Congress called together for that purpose 
and saw a superb opportunity of a hold-up 
in the necessities of the United States. Day 
after day the w^arning went forth from 
Bogota from the representatives of the 
Department of Panama and to Bogota 

15 



INTRODUCTION 

from Panama itself, that if the treaty was 
rejected, Panama would reassert the inde- 
pendence which had been violently taken 
from her eighteen years ago. The Colom- 
bian Congress, in their territorial isolation 
and subordination to their dictator and 
President, failed to comprehend the grav- 
ity of the situation. "While this treaty, the 
most important document in their history, 
was pending in their Senate and House, 
they adjourned for a day to have read to 
them the sonnets which had been written 
by one of their poetic deputies. 

The occasion, however, was not one for 
verse to Venus, and the situation not an 
opera bouffe, for Theodore Roosevelt was 
President of the United States. When 
Panama fulfilled the threat known to all 
the world for months and successfully 
accomplished her revolution, the President 
acted within his constitutional privilege 
with the directness, courage and wisdom 
characteristic of his whole public life. He 
was under the mandate of a law passed 
at the last session of Congress which au- 

16 



INTRODUCTION 

thorized the purchase of the French canal 
properties, which appropriated $10,000,000 
for immediate purposes and authorized the 
Secretary of the Treasury to borrow $130,- 
000,000 more, which directed the President 
to make the terms for the building of the 
canal and then to begin. If he failed 
within a reasonable time to secure the con- 
cession then he was to turn to Nicaragua 
and Costa Rica. 

But without any intervention or action 
on his part in the kaleidoscope of politics 
common to the Latin nations of Central 
and South America, the opportunity was 
presented and he seized it. He might have 
let a war go on between Panama and Co- 
lombia. He might have commenced fruit- 
less negotiations with Nicaragua and Costa 
Rica. He might have transferred the whole 
question to Congress, weakly abandoning 
his executive responsibility, but the man- 
date of the American people was upon him 
to build the isthmian canal, and the Con- 
gress, by the unanimous vote of the Sen- 
ators and members of the House of Rep- 

17 



INTRODUCTION 

resentatives on the Republican side and a 
large number of Senators and members of 
the House on the Democratic side, have 
affirmed the wisdom and the constitutional- 
ity of his coui'se. 

It is an interesting question: Where 
have those of the opposition been during 
these epoch making times, and where are 
they now? They were against the gold 
standard of value, and part of them are 
still. They were against the tariff, and all 
of them are now. They opposed our hold- 
ing Cuba and insisted upon its imme- 
diately receiving independence, when the 
wisdom of McKinley said, "We will take 
the time necessary for the Cubans to learn 
after three hundred years of tjTanny the 
primary lessons of representative govern- 
ment, of liberty.^' In the mean time we 
will, by sanitation, remove from our own 
country the peril of yellow fever which 
has so often come from Cuba and devas- 
tated us. Now, they admit we were right. 

They proposed free trade to Porto Rico 
which would have pauperized her and 

18 



INTRODUCTION 

made her a beneficiary of the United States 
Treasury. But the Republican majority 
devised a tarifl: of limited operations which 
has placed that island in conditions of 
prosperity never before dreamed of by its 
people. They were opposed, and are still, 
to the retention of the Philippines, while 
the Republican administration has sent 
there a thousand school teachers, has spent 
millions in opening roads, has reclaimed 
the land from the orders upon a fair 
understanding and adjustment and then 
transferred it to the people under the 
operation of our wise homestead laws. The 
moneys spent in the Philippine Islands 
which have been of such incalculable value 
in the development of their resources and 
for the employment and wealth of their 
people have come from a taxation on them- 
selves which has not been felt because of 
their prosperity. Under the Spanish rule 
all the taxes went to Spain. Under Ameri- 
can rule all the taxes are spent upon and 
for the people of the islands. The lessons 
of representative government, of liberty 

19 



INTRODUCTION 

and of law are being learned more rapidly 
among the tribes of the archipelago than 
among any such people ever before, and 
the peace and happiness which prevail are 
lessons in colonial administration to the 
governments which have been ruling col- 
onies for centuries. 

The opposition stand for negation and 
allegation. Instead of having a live pro- 
gramme to present to the American people 
which will intelligently promise an im- 
provement of existing conditions, they are 
looking for issues among the debris and 
the scaffolding thrown aside by the Re- 
publicans after their beneficent structures 
have been completed. 

Our Democratic friends admit that pros- 
perity is greater than ever before, but they 
say that it is not due to the protective 
tariff, it is not due to the American mar- 
kets for Americans, it is not due to the 
gold standard of value, it is not due to 
Republican policies and administrations, 
but that God has wrought it all. 

Speaking with due reverence, if this be 

20 



INTRODUCTION 

true, wliy is it that He gives prosperity 
only in Republican administrations and 
disaster under Democratic Presidents? 
The broader and better view is that a 
merciful Providence gives to man the 
earth and the fulness thereof for his en- 
joyment according to the qualities which 
will enable him to succeed. Those qualities 
were exhibited in every Republican ad- 
ministration and the opposite in the only 
two Democratic administrations we remem- 
ber, the one from 1856 to 1860, the other 
from 1893 to 1897. The founder of the 
great banking house of Rothschilds was 
asked to what he ascribed his phenomenal 
success in the terrible competitions of his 
period when he started from such humble 
beginnings. His answer was, "I never 
would have business transactions with un- 
lucky men. ' ' Then why should the Ameri- 
can people think for a moment of aban- 
doning conditions of unusual prosperity 
for partnership with the hard luck party? 
They say the President is rash. He was 
rash, when, as Assistant Secretary of the 

21 



INTRODUCTION 

Na^y, lie paralyzed the bureau officers by 
ordering the na\^ to burn powder in target 
practice. But that rashness materialized 
in the highest conservatism when those 
gunners, under Dewey, sank the fleet at 
Manila Bay in fifty minutes, and Cervera's 
fleet at Santiago in sixty. All of his ac- 
quaintances said he was rash when he 
threw up a comfortable berth in the Navy 
Department to take upon himself the perils 
of the campaign in Cuba ; that he was rash 
when, at the head of his regiment, he 
encountered volleys of Spanish bullets in 
battle, but that rashness displayed the 
qualities which make the American people 
both trust and love him. 

He has probed deeply the great depart- 
ments of the government and prosecuted 
and convicted those of his own household 
of faith who were found guilty. He en- 
forced the law when dire predictions of 
disaster were made, and by doing so lost 
the favor of some of the ablest and strong- 
est of our financial leaders, but the Su- 
preme Court has sustained his action and 



INTRODUCTION 

the markets have rebounded with that 
phenomenal rise in the securities affected 
which demonstrates the judgment of the 
investors of the country. 

The completion of the isthmian canal 
will bring the cities on the Atlantic coast 
nearer the Orient than the ports of con- 
tinental Europe or Great Britain. Its 
construction will revolutionize the com- 
merce of the world and incalculably pro- 
mote the position and prosperity of the 
United States. The President's advocacy 
of a large navy which will make us the 
second maritime power of the world is a 
wise and farsighted policy to meet the 
expansion of commerce which must come 
to us by the isthmian canal and the open 
door from American diplomacy. To ask 
for an open door for the surplus products 
of American industry with neither a mer- 
cantile marine nor battleships would be the 
worst sort of weakness, but when the great- 
est and strongest and richest nation of the 
vrorld asks for an open door with a fleet 
commensurate with its power, necessities 

23 



INTRODUCTION 

and rights, the answer will be a welcome 
without a shot fired or the peace of the 
world disturbed. 

With a past unequalled in its splendor, 
a present unsurpassed in its beneficence, 
issues as clear as the sunlight and a can- 
didate who represents better than almost 
any man in our history the vigorous life, 
integrity, ability and patriotism of typical 
Americanism, the Republican party will 
march once more to victory. 



24 



CHAPTER I. 
THE SCHOOLING OF A PRESIDENT. 

ON the afternoon of September 14, 
1901, Theodore Roosevelt became 
president of the United States. He 
had been called to that high office by a 
tragedy. "William McKinley had been 
stricken to his death by an assassin's hand. 
He had just entered upon his second term 
and the nation was at the flood of the great- 
est tide of prosperity it had ever known. 
Never before had the prestige of the United 
States been so great abroad. Never before 
had confidence in the government been so 
secure at home. American finance was un- 
assailable. American industry was con- 
quering the markets of the world. Not a 
cloud appeared on the business horizon. 
The nation faced four years more of 
administration certain to be free from 
disturbing efforts to change existing con- 
ditions. 

25 



THE TRIUMPHS OF THE 

"William McKinley's policy had brought 
prosperity and his re-election had insured 
it. But McKinley had been removed from 
his high place by the malice and ignorance 
and stupidity of anarchism, and Theodore 
Roosevelt came to administer the affairs of 
the nation in his stead. 

Theodore Roosevelt was not a stranger 
to the people. They knew him well, they 
thought. They had knowTi him and ad- 
mired him for his rugged honesty, his tire- 
less energy, his masterful hand in public 
administration, and his hatred of unfaith- 
fulness in office. 

The people had seen Theodore Roosevelt 
when he was fighting his way on the plains 
of the great West. They had had a fore- 
sight of his vigor and executive ability 
while he was a police commissioner in New 
York. They had learned his devotion to 
principle when he was a civil service com- 
missioner. They had studied him while 
he had served them as assistant secretary 
of the na\y, and again a loader of a regi- 
ment at the heights of San Juan hill in 




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CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW, 
Senatox' from New York. 



ROOSEVELT ADMINISTRATION 

the Santiago campaign. The/ had watched 
and admired his vigorous administration 
while he was governor of New York. His 
dignity while he presided over the senate, 
during the brief period that he held the 
vice-presidential office, had impressed 
them. 

Thus endowed with the respect, the love 
and the confidence of the people Theodore 
Roosevelt stood in the quiet parlor of the 
Buffalo mansion and took the oath of office 
which made him president. A minute later 
he had said: 

''In the hour of deep and terrible na- 
tional bereavement I wish to state it shall 
be my intention and endeavor to continue 
absolutely unbroken the policy of Presi- 
dent McKinley, for the peace and pros- 
perity and honor of our beloved country. *' 

The nation had expected the declaration 
and it was not disappointed; and the peo- 
ple knew that what Theodore Roosevelt 
had promised, Theodore Roosevelt would 
do. 

37 



THE TRIUMPHS OF THE 

It is not the purpose here to present a 
biography of Theodore Roosevelt. It will 
be sufficient to indicate his career in broad 
lines ; merely to show the man as he is and 
as he has been. His life has been like an 
open page of a familiar book, for he has 
been before the public for twenty years, 
and if there is a flaw in his character the 
people would have detected it long ago. 

In 1884 Theodore Roosevelt became a 
figure in national politics for the first time. 
In that year he was one of the New York 
delegates to the Republican national con- 
vention, when he was 26 years old. He 
took an active part in the debates and was 
accorded a front place in the New York 
delegation. 

From 1889 until 1895 Theodore Roose- 
velt was a member of the National Civil 
Service Commission. He was appointed by 
President Harrison and continued in the 
office by President Cleveland. His reports 
while a member of that commission gave 
early indication of the character of the 
man who was afterwards to hold the high- 



ROOSEVELT ADMINISTRATION 

est office in the gift of the nation. And it is 
to be noted that Theodore Roosevelt as civil 
service commissioner never said or wrote a 
thing that Theodore Roosevelt as president 
did not live up to. He has lived to prove 
his own sincerity. 

In 1895 Theodore Roosevelt, Frederick 
D. Grant and Andrew D. Parker were ap- 
pointed police commissioners of New York 
City. When the board was organized Mr. 
Roosevelt was chosen as its president. It 
was as a member of the police board that 
New York first, and the entire nation soon 
afterwards, came to learn what manner of 
man Theodore Roosevelt was. It is history 
that this commission revolutionized the 
police force of New York City and also it 
revolutionized the methods of enforcing 
the law. When Roosevelt became presi- 
dent of the board of police commissioners 
26 policemen, including one inspector and 
five captains, were under indictments for 
crime. The new board introduced drastic 
reforms — so drastic that in two months 355 
policemen, including one chief, three in- 

29 



THE TRIUMPHS OF THE 

spectors, eleven captains and eleven ser- 
geants were removed for cause. Their 
places were filled by new men who were 
encouraged to do their duty by a system 
of honorary rewards. 

It had long been declared that the excise 
laws of New York City could not be en- 
forced. Theodore Roosevelt proved that 
they could be. He enforced the law with 
rigid equity to all alike. The rich saloon- 
keeper found that his ''political pull" was 
useless. In the first year of the Roosevelt 
regime the police made 10,000 arrests for 
violation of the Sunday law. Saloons, 
gambling resorts and disorderly houses 
were closed, tramp lodging houses abol- 
ished, blackmailing and the protection of 
vice eradicated. The result was that New 
York had fewer crimes and life and prop- 
erty were safer. 

From war against vice to the war against 
Spain was Theodore Roosevelt's next step. 
In 1897 he was appointed assistant secre- 
tary of the na\y, under President 'Me- 
Kinley. It has been said that Roosevelt 

30 



ROOSEVELT ADMINISTRATION 

won the battle of Manila in 1897, although 
Dewey did not actually fight it until 1898. 
This probably is unfair to Dewey and to 
Dewey's men, but it is true that it was 
Roosevelt's tireless energy that put 
Dewey's fleet in condition to engage in a 
naval battle upon the winning of which 
depended American control of the Pacific 
in the war with Spain. 

As assistant secretary of the navy in 
1897 Theodore Roosevelt believed that war 
with Spain could not be avoided. His 
counsels were not asked for and he could 
do nothing in the negotiations to prevent 
war. But as assistant secretary of the 
navy, working ceaselessly and silently, with 
all the energy of his nature he saw to it 
that every ship in the navy was in perfect 
condition for war — fully manned, armed, 
equipped and supplied. It was due to this 
tireless energy of Theodore Roosevelt, more 
than to any other man in the government, 
that when the war began the fleet was 
ready. 

31 



THE TRIUMPHS OF THE 

When war did begin Theodore Roosevelt 
left his desk to take active service. He 
might have had a commission as colonel of 
a regiment of volunteers; but he refused 
it. His life on the plains of the Great West 
had taught him where to find men who 
could ride, who could fight and who could 
stand fatigue and hardships. He organ- 
ized the Rough Riders, a regiment that has 
since been taken as a model by every nation 
in Europe, and was content to serve as sec- 
ond in command. 

Any history of the Spanish-American 
war will vindicate Roosevelt's judgment. 
The part played by the Rough Riders 
helped to decide the issues of the war. 
Roosevelt earned his promotion to the col- 
onelcy of that now famous regiment. It 
was in the first fight on Cuban soil and in 
the last. 

It was Theodore Roosevelt who moved 
the American army from Cuba to Mon- 
tauk point, Long Island, although he did 
not select the latter camp. After the San- 
tiago capitulation Gen. Shafter's army was 

S2 



HOOSEVELT ADMINISTRATION 

ordered to retire to San Luis in the interior 
of Cuba, where conditions were supposed 
to be more healthful. Colonel Roosevelt at 
once addressed an emphatic protest to Gen. 
Shafter, declaring that one-half of the 
American soldiers in Cuba would die of 
fever unless moved to the north at once. 
This protest was followed by the famous 
'* round robin." It created intenge indig- 
nation in the war department at Wash- 
ington, but it had its effect. The army- 
started north in three days. 

Theodore Roosevelt's military career 
lasted less than a year. It has been suc- 
cinctly epitomized by Murat Halstead as 
follows : 

''First, he foresaw as assistant secretary 
of the navy, the war, and he dominated 
the department to prepare for it, by find- 
ing the warships, the coal, the powder and 
the men. 

* ' Second, he raised a regiment of incom- 
parable mettle and quite unconquerable. 

*' Third, such was his executive force 
and ceaseless effort, he landed his volun- 



THE TRIUMPHS OF THE 

teers ahead of the regulars and headed the 
column that got the first baptism of blood. 

"Fourth, ^vhen the foe was vanquished 
on sea and land, the war over, he took the 
ships that were never before possible, 
using the telegraph, the steamboat, the rail- 
road, the cables under the sea, and lifted 
an army ready to perish from jungles rank 
with fever, and wafted them to a land of 
health, saving thousands of lives. The 
people rejoiced in the man, commended 
and celebrated the hero, and elected him 
when there was peace with honor governor 
of the State of New York." 

It is a matter of political histoiy that 
Roosevelt objected with all the strenuous- 
ness of his nature to the proposal to place 
his name on the national ticket in second 
place, in 1900. He yielded only when it 
became apparent to him that his party's 
wish was practically unanimous. It is an 
open secret that had ]\IcKinley been at the 
end of his second term in 1900, instead of 
his first, that Roosevelt would have been 
nominated for president, almost by accla- 

84 



ROOSEVELT ADMINISTRATION 

mation. The people were for him. They 
had not forgotten that heroic dash up the 
heights of San Juan, led by a man who 
preferred to fight for his country's honor, 
rather than to plan in safety for his conn- 
try's success. 

The party leaders had their way and 
Roosevelt, with quiet dignity, accepted the 
second place on the ticket. He went into 
the campaign with the same vim and dar- 
ing that carried him through the war in 
Cuba. His party won and he settled him- 
self for four years of waiting in the quiet 
uneventful obscurity of the vice-president 's 
office. He presided over the deliberative 
sessions of the senate with a dignity worthy 
of the traditions of the office. No vice- 
president could do more. 

The tragedy at Buffalo brought Roose- 
velt into the white light that beats upon 
a throne. He was the youngest man who 
had been called to that exalted office in the 
history of the republic. Without a mo- 
ment's warning he was placed face to face 
with some of the greatest problems in 

35 



THE TRIUMPHS OF THE 

statecraft that had arisen in the century. 
He was called upon to rule the destinies of 
nearly 80,000,000 of people— to govern an 
empire of territory greater, stronger, 
richer, more powerful than the combined 
powers of Europe. His became the task 
of governing the people of the Philippines, 
of building up in those islands on the edge 
of the Asiatic continent a free and popular 
government. His was the duty to grapple 
with problems of internal administration 
and foreign relations — to preserve the 
rights of the people at home and to uphold 
the honor of the nation abroad. 

President Roosevelt did not long keep 
the world in doubt as to his views on for- 
eign and domestic policy. His first mes- 
sage to Congress was read by the people 
of the United States on December 2, 1901. 
It reviewed every problem with which the 
nation had to do. It left nothing to be 
guessed at. From that day forward, the 
powers of Europe, the people at home, the 
trusts, the labor unions, the financiers and 
the big taxpayers knew exactly where 

36 



ROOSEVELT ADMINISTRATION 

Theodore Roosevelt stood. He left nothing 
to be inferred. He spoke out. 

It is worth while to compare his admin- 
istration with that first message. No other 
president has promised more, no other has 
done so much to carry out his pledges. 

The young president's first executive 
declaration upon the question of the trusts 
and Cuban reciprocity are repeated in sep- 
arate chapters elsewhere. Let us take up 
some other features of his message. First, 
most naturally, he paid tribute to the 
greatness and personal worth of William 
McKinley. Passing to a discussion of 
anarchy and of the danger it threatened to 
the free institutions of America, he said: 

''Anarchy is no more an expression of 
'social discontent' than picking pockets or 
wife beating. The anarchist, and especially 
the anarchist in the United States, is mere- 
ly one type of criminal, more dangerous 
than any other, because he represents the 
same depravity in a greater degree. The 
man who advocates anarchy, directly or 
indirectly, in any shape or fashion, or the 

37 



THE TRIUMPHS OF THE 

man who apologizes for anarchists and 
their deeds, makes himself morally acces- 
sory to murder before the fact. 

''The anarchist is a criminal whose per- 
verted instincts lead him to prefer con- 
fusion and chaos to the most beneficent 
form of social order. His protest of con- 
cern for workingmen is outrageous in its 
impudent falsity ; for if the political insti- 
tutions of this country do not afford oppor- 
tunity to every honest and intelligent son 
of toil, then the door of hope forever is 
closed against him. The anarchist every- 
where is not merely the enemy of system 
and progress, but the deadly foe of liberty. 
If ever anarchy is triumphant, its triumph 
will last for but one red moment, to be 
succeeded for ages by the gloomy night 
of despotism. 

*'For the anarchist himself, whether he 
preaches or practices his doctrines, we 
need not have one particle more concern 
than for any ordinary murderer. He is 
not the victim of social or political injus- 
tice. There are no wrongs to remedy in 

38 



ROOSEVELT ADMINISTRATION 

his case. The cause of his criminality is 
to be found in his own evil passions, and 
in the evil conduct of those who urge him 
on, not in any failure by others, or by the 
state, to do justice to him or his. He is 
a malefactor and nothing else. He is in no 
sense, in no state or way, a 'product of 
social conditions,' save that a highwayman 
is 'produced' by the fact that an unarmed 
man happens to have a purse. It is a 
travesty upon the great and holy names 
of liberty and freedom to be invoked in 
such a cause. No man or body of men 
preaching anarchist doctrines should be 
allowed at large, any more than if preach- 
ing the murder of some specified private 
individual. Anarchist speeches, writings, 
and meetings are essentially seditious and 
treasonable. 

''I earnestly recommend to Congress 
that in the exercise of its wise discretion 
it should take into consideration the com- 
ing to this country of anarchists or persons 
professing hostility to all government and 
justifying the murder of those placed in 

39 



THE TRIUMPHS OF THE 

authority. Such individuals as those who 
not long ago gathered in open meeting to 
glorify the murder of King Humbert of 
Italy perpetrate a crime, and the law 
should insure their rigorous punishment. 
They and those like them should be kept 
out of this country ; and if found here they 
should be promptly deported to the coun- 
try whence they came; and far reaching 
provision should be made for the punish- 
ment of those who stay. The federal courts 
should be given jurisdiction over any man 
who kills or attempts to kill the president 
or any man who by the constitution or by 
law is in line of succession for the presi- 
dency. ' ' 

This w^as the first recommendation made 
to Congress by Theodore Roosevelt. On 
March 3, 1903, Congress passed a law em- 
bodying most of the features recom- 
mended. The second recommendation, for 
the department of commerce and labor, 
was adopted by Congress and a new cabi- 
net office created. 

40 



KOOSEVELT ADMINISTRATION" 

The message next discussed the labor 
question. President Roosevelt was out- 
spoken in his friendship for labor. He 
urged laws prohibiting the competition of 
convict contract labor in the open market. 
He declared a provision should be made to 
enforce the eight-hour law. He opposed 
excessive tasks for women and children, 
night work, and work under insanitary 
conditions. He was not afraid to speak a 
word in behalf of organized or union labor. 
He said: 

*'The most vital problem with which this 
country, and for that matter the whole 
civilized world, has to deal is the problem 
which has for one side the betterment of 
social conditions, moral and physical, in 
large cities, and for another side the effort 
to deal with that tangle of far reaching 
questions which we group together when 
we speak of 'labor.' The chief factor in 
the success of each man— wage worker, 
farmer and capitalist alike— must ever be 
the sum total of his own individual quali- 
ties and abilities. 

41 



THE TRIUMPHS OF THE 

' ' Second only to this comes the power of 
acting in combination or association with 
others. Very great good has been and 
will be accomplished by associations or 
unions of wage vv'orkers, when managed 
with forethought, and when they combine 
insistence upon their own rights with law 
abiding respect for the rights of others. 
The display of these qualities in such 
bodies is a duty to the nation no less than 
to the associations themselves.'' 

Regarding the tariff the president in his 
first official communication to Congress 
gave evidence of conservatism and prudent 
forethought. He wrote: 

''There is a general acquiescence in our 
present tariff system as a national policy. 
The first requisite to our prosperity is the 
continuity and stability of this economic 
policy. Nothing could be more unwise 
than to disturb the business interests of 
the country by any general tariff change 
at this time. Doubt, apprehension, uncer- 
tainty are exactly what we most wish to 
avoid in the interest of our commercial 

42 




JOHN HAY, 

Seci'etarv of State. 



ROOSEVELT ADMINISTRATION 

and material well being. Our experience 
in the past has shown that sweeping re- 
visions of the tariff are apt to produce 
conditions closely approaching panic in the 
business world. 

**Yet it is not only possible, but emi- 
nontly desirable, to combine with the sta- 
bility of our economic system a supple- 
mentary system of reciprocal benefit and 
obligation with other nations. Such 
reciprocity is an incident and result of the 
firm establishment and preservation of our 
present economic policy. It was specially 
provided for in the present tariff law.'^ 

Another evidence of the president's con- 
servatism is found in his reference to the 
great transportation interests of the coun- 
try. He had no hesitancy in declaring that 
the great railway systems of the country 
should be held to strict accountability in 
their duties toward the public, but he 
opposed radical legislation. In urging 
amendm.ents to the interstate commerce act 
in order to provide for the better enforce- 
ment of its provisions, he said: 

43 



THE TRIUMPHS OF THE 

*'The railway is a public servant. Its 
rates should be just to and open to all 
shippers alike. The government should 
see to it that within its jurisdiction this is 
so and should provide a speedy, inexpen- 
sive and effective remedy to that end. ' At 
the same time it must not be forgotten that 
our railways are the arteries through which 
the commercial life blood of this nation 
flows. Nothing could be more foolish than 
the enactment of legislation which would 
unnecessarily interfere with the develop- 
ment and operation of these commercial 
agencies. ' * 



44 



KOOSEVELT ADMINISTRATION 



CHAPTER II. 

THE SETTLEMENT OF THE COAL 
STRIKE. 

THE settlement of the anthracite coal 
strike in 1902 was the first notable 
achievement in President Roosevelt *s 
administration. It was the most serious 
labor disturbance that had menaced the 
prosperity of the country for a quarter of 
a century. It cost mine owners, miners, 
railroads, manufacturers and merchants 
$197,390,000. It continued for 154 days 
and was settled by President Roosevelt on 
a basis which compelled the mine owners 
to give full recognition to the rights and 
dignity of organized union labor, while at 
the same time the rights of capital were 
not impaired. 

The greatness of the victory for union 
labor, the cost and seriousness of the strug- 
gle, the danger to business interests in- 
volved, and the tremendous value of the 

45 



THE TRIUMPHS OF THE 

President's successful efforts to restore 
peace in the labor world, and at the same 
time to guard the prosperity of the coun- 
try, make it worth while to give a brief 
review of the history of the strike. 

The situation in the Pennsylvania 
anthracite field is paralleled in no other 
laboring community in the world. Prac- 
tically the entire output of the hard coal 
of the United States is controlled by half 
a dozen men. They are: 

GEORGE F BAER, President Philadelphia and 
Reading Coal and Iron Company; Lehigh and 
Wilkesbarre Coal Company; Temple Iron 
Company. 

E. B. THOMAS, Chairman Pennsylvania Coal 
Company; Hillsdale Coal and Iron Company. 

W. H. TRUESDALE, President Delaware, Lack- 
awanna and Western Railroad Company. 

J, B. FOWLER, President Scranton Coal Com- 
pany; Elk Hill Coal and Iron Company. 

R. N. OLIPHANT, President Delaware and Hud- 
son Company. 

ALFRED WATERS, President Lehigh Valley 
Coal Company. 

JOHN MARKLE, an independent operator. 

These men are *' trustees for the own- 
ers." The real owners of the anthracite 

46 



ROOSEVELT ADMINISTRATION 

coal fields are the coal carrying railroads, 
the Reading, the Delaware and Lacka- 
wanna, the Ontario and Western, the Erie, 
and the Pennsylvania. 

These companies have a monopoly in the 
anthracite field. They control 150,000 
workingmen. They own the houses in 
which their miners live. They own the 
stores from which their miners are com- 
pelled to buy. They own the mines, they 
own the railroads that haul the coal to 
market, and by these facts are able to con- 
trol the dealers, wholesale and retail, and 
to fix the price of anthracite coal in every 
city in the United States. 

In 1901 the anthracite coal operators, at 
the urgent request of the late United States 
Senator M. A. Hanna, agreed to arbitrate 
with the miners, who were then striking 
for shorter hours and higher pay. As a 
result of that arbitration the operators 
agreed to pay a 10 per cent advance in 
wages. The men returned to work satis- 
fied. In a few months, however, they com- 
plained that the operators, to make up for 

47 I 



THE TRIUMPHS OF THE 

the advance in wages, were charging more 
for provisions at country stores and dock- 
ing the miners heavily in weighing coal. 

A strike resulted. It began on May 12, 
1902, and involved 183,500 men. 

At first, the public took but little interest 
in the strike. Then the newspapers began 
printing a few startling facts. The public 
discovered first that the average miner in 
the employ of the hard coal railroads, was 
earning less than $400 a year. On Presi- 
dent Baer's own estimate his employes 
received $368 a year. President Mitchell, 
of the United Mine Workers, declared the 
average pay was even less than that. He 
declared there were thousands of men 
working for 68 cents a day, and that 
breaker and washery boys received from 
3 to 8 cents a day. 

During May and June the miners con- 
tented themselves with marching in bodies 
through the coal region, overawing non- 
union men and driving them from work by 
hooting and jeering. There were many 
cases of individual assault, but as a rule 

48 



ROOSEVELT ADMINISTRATION 

the great army of strikers kept the peace. 

The operators daily assured the public 
that the strikers were returning to work 
in large numbers and that the mines would 
be running with full force inside of a 
month. They took such a rosy view of the 
situation that J. Pierpont Morgan de- 
parted for Europe with the information 
from his lieutenants that the strike was 
on the verge of breaking up. 

July came and the miners, although 
fighting what seemed to be a losing battle, 
remained firm. The companies, despite 
their boasts, were unable to operate their 
mines. 

Then the anthracite mine owners began 
systematic efforts to get out the troops, 
but the miners, well disciplined by Presi- 
dent John Mitchell, kept the peace and the 
troops were not called out. 

In July Senator Hanna, Bishop Potter, 
Archbishop Ryan and a score of men 
equally prominent, attempted to bring 
about arbitration. They failed, the oper- 
ators demanding the unconditional sur- 

49 



THE TRIUMPHS OF THE 

render of their employes. The operators 
declared they would never arbitrate with 
John ]\Iitchell or the United ]Mine Work- 
ers and that their employes must first 
return to work as individuals. Then and 
not until then would the anthracite oper- 
ators consider the demands of the miners. 

A crisis in the industrial world was at 
hand. The country at last realized that it 
was face to face with a coal famine that 
threatened to paralyze every industry east 
of the Mississippi river. The soft coal 
miners, all compactly organized, only 
waited the signal from John ]\Iitcliell to 
drop pick and shovel. Prices of coal went 
higher and higher and mills and factories 
all over the country began to feel the blight 
of the strike. 

In the latter part of July and in August 
rioting began. Troops were sent into the 
disturbed district and the strike dragged 
along. 

The situation was becoming alarming. 
The coal supply was running low. The 
people of the United States began to rise 

50 



ROOSEVELT ADMINISTRATION 

in indignation. Hundreds of organiza- 
tions petitioned the president and Con- 
gress, and governors of states, to force the 
operators to agree to arbitration. 

By September 20 the anthracite coal 
supply of the United States practically 
was exhausted. Various expedients were 
adopted to force the operators to come to 
terms. They all failed. Five Boston men 
of wealth and influence brought suit to 
have receivers appointed for the anthra- 
cite coal companies. Their effort was abor- 
tive. The mayor of Detroit called upon the 
governors of states and the mayors of cities 
to meet in national conference at Detroit 
on October 9 to devise means to grapple 
with a situation which threatened indus- 
trial and commercial paralysis to the entire 
country. 

At this crisis President Roosevelt 
asserted himself. With characteristic di- 
rectness he went to the root of the trouble. 
He wrote a personal note to the six men 
who control the anthracite coal supply of 
the United States and requested them to 

51 



THE TRIUMPHS OF THE 

meet him at the White House on October 3. 
He sent a similar request to John Mitchell, 
president of the United Mine ^Yorkers. 

It is significant of the confidence which 
the people of the United States have in 
Theodore Roosevelt that all other efforts 
to end the strike ended the moment it 
became known that he had called the coal 
operators to the White House. Business 
men and laboring men felt that he was the 
one man who could and who would settle 
the strike. 

The conference was held at the White 
House on October 3. Those present were : 

President Roosevelt. 

The attorney general. 

Carroll D. Wright, commissioner of 
labor. 

President Baer of the Reading. 

President Thomas of the Erie. 

President Truesdale of the Lackawanna 
and Western. 

President Fowler of the Ontario and 
Western. 

53 



ROOSEVELT ADMINISTRATION 

. Daniel Wilcox, vice-president of the 
Delaware and Hudson, representing Presi- 
dent Oliphant. 

John Markle, representing the inde- 
pendent coal operators. 

President John IMitchell of the United 
]\Iine Workers of America. 

Thomas Duffy, T. D. Nichols and John 
Fahy, presidents of Districts Numbers 7, 1 
and 9 of the miners' union, being the dis- 
tricts where anthracite coal is mined. 

At this first conference the operators 
were respectful, but no more. They main- 
tained the same defiant, unyielding atti- 
tude they had shown to Senator Hanna, 
Bishop Potter, Archbishop Ryan, Gov. 
Odell and others who had endeavored to 
induce them to consent to submit their 
differences with the miners to arbitration. 

When the conference opened President 
Roosevelt made the following statement : 

* ' I wish to call your attention to the fact 
that there are three parties affected by the 
situation in the anthracite trade— the oper- 
ators, the miners, and the general public. 

53 



THE TRIUMPHS OF THE 

I speak for neither the operators nor the 
miners, but for the general public. The 
questions at issue which led to the situation 
affect immediately the parties concerned — 
the operators and the miners. But the 
situation itself vitally affects the public. 

**As long as there seemed to be reason- 
able hope that these matters could be ad- 
justed between the parties it did not seem 
proper for me to intervene in any way. I 
disclaim any right or duty to intervene in 
this way upon legal grounds or upon any 
official relation that I bear to the situation ; 
but the urgency and the terrible nature of 
the catastrophe impending over a large 
portion of our people in the shape of a 
winter fuel famine, impel me, after much 
anxious thought, to believe that my duty 
requires me to use whatever influence I 
personally can to bring to an end a situa- 
tion which has become literally intolerable. 

*'The evil possibilities are so far reach- 
ing that it seems to me that you are not 
only justified in sinking, but required to 
sink, for the time being any tenacity to 

51 



ROOSEVELT ADMINISTRATION 

your respective claims in the matter at 
issue between you. 

**In my judgment the situation impera- 
tively requires that you meet upon the 
common plane of the necessities of the 
public. With all the earnestness there is 
in me I ask that there be an immediate 
resumption of operation in the coal mines, 
in some such way as will without a day's 
unnecessary delay meet the crying needs 
of the people. 

*'I do not invite a discussion of your 
respective claims and positions. I appeal 
to your patriotism, to the spirit that sinks 
personal considerations and makes indi- 
vidual sacrifices to the general good." 

The anthracite operators almost arro- 
gantly refused to meet President Roose- 
velt's appeal. They refused to arbitrate. 
They practically demanded federal troops 
to overawe the strikers in order that they 
might work their mines as they pleased, 
pay what wages they pleased and charge 
what price they pleased. 

55 



THE TRIUMPHS OF THE 

President Baer told President Roosevelt 
that he should not *' waste time negotiating 
with the fomenters of this anarchy and 
insolent defiance of law," but that he 
should "do as was done in the war of the 
rebellion, restore the majesty of the law 
and re-establish peace at any price." 

E. B. Thomas, president of the Erie, 
told President Roosevelt that mob \aolence 
alone prevented resumption of work in the 
mines. 

John Markle declared it was President 
Roosevelt's first duty to send federal troops 
into the coal fields. He said : 

*'I now ask you to perform the duties 
vested in you as president of the United 
States to at once squelch the anarchistic 
condition of affairs existing in the anthra- 
cite coal regions by the strong arm of the 
military at your command. If you desire 
anthracite coal to be placed in the market 
quickly, take the necessary steps at once 
and put federal troops in the field." 

W. H. Truesdale, president of the Lack- 
awanna, declared that the "suppression of 

56 



ROOSEVELT ADMINISTRATION 

anarchy" must be the first step toward 
peace. 

David Wilcox, president of the Delaware 
and Hudson, called the miners' union a 
monopoly and declared they were plotting 
to gain control of the entire coal supply 
of the country. 

In strong contrast to these demands was 
the simple proposal of John Mitchell, pres- 
ident of the United Mine Workers. He 
said: 

*' We propose that the issues in this strike 
be referred to you and a tribunal of your 
own selection, and agree to accept your 
award upon all or any of the questions 
involved. ' ' 

No greater tribute to the personal worth 
of Theodore Roosevelt was ever paid by 
any man. Here was the representative of 
nearly half a million laboring men, who 
had suffered and whose families had suf- 
fered for months, who were engaged in 
a life and death struggle with a combina- 
tion of corporate interests, capitalized at 
$500,000,000, willing to rest their whole 

57 



THE TRIUMPHS OF THE 

case upon the decision of the man who sat 
in the White House and to abide by that 
decision for any term of years the coal 
operators might demand. 

There were no reservations, no condi- 
tions. The miners in effect said to Theo- 
dore Roosevelt: 

''You decide our case. We will accept 
your decision in advance.'^ 

The operators refused to accept the arbi- 
tration of the President and exposed the 
w^eakness of their whole case. 

The anthracite o^^Tiers tried to face pub- 
lic opinion and failed. Every way they 
turned they found sentiment against them. 
They had left the White House on October 
3, satisfied that they had taught Theodore 
Roosevelt a lesson in government. They 
returned to the "Wliite House on October 
13 in a different spirit. They had stood 
for ten days in the fierce light that beat 
down upon them from an aroused and 
indignant public and they could not hold 
out against it. 

58 




W. H. MOODY. 
Secret ai'y of the Navy, 



ROOSEVELT ADMINISTRATION 

On the night of October 13 J. Pierpont 
Morgan appeared at the White House at 
the request of the anthracite operators. In 
their behalf and at their request the New 
York financier asked President Roosevelt 
to name an arbitration commission. The 
request was in writing and was signed by 
the anthracite operators. 

President Roosevelt named the arbitra- 
tion commission on October 15. It was 
made up as follows: 
BRIG. GEN. JOHN M. NELSON, U. S. A., an 

officer of the engineer corps. 
E. W. PARKEE, an expert mining engineer, and 
chief statistician of the coal division of the 
United States geological survey. 
GEORGE GRAY, judge of the United States 
court, former senator from Delaware; mem- 
ber of the Spanish peace commission; mem- 
ber of international committee of arbitra- 
tion under The Hague convention. 
JOHN LANCASTER SPAULDING, Catholic 

Bishop of Peoria. 
EDGAR E. CLARK, grand chief of the Order of 

Railway Conductors. 
THOMAS H. WATKINS, of Scranton, Pa., 
acquainted with mining and selling of coal. 
CARROL D. WRIGHT, United States commis- 
sioner of labor. 

5D 



THE TRIUMPHS OF THE 

The appointment of the commission 
ended the strike. The miners returned to 
work, just as John Mitchell said they 
would. The idle mines were again in full 
operation. All fear of a coal famine van- 
ished. Manufacturing industry revived at 
once, and prosperity, threatened for 
months, continued. The courage of Theo- 
dore Roosevelt and the implicit confidence 
placed in him by the laboring men of the 
country averted a great industrial crisis. 

The press of the United States did not 
hesitate to give President Roosevelt the 
credit. Labor leaders were equally prompt 
in declaring that the president had sho\vn 
himself, not only the friend of the work- 
ingman, but of the union workingman. 

Ultimately the arbitration commission 
gave its decision. It sustained most of the 
demands of the miners' union. It gave 
them increased wages. It justified the con- 
fidence placed in President Roosevelt by 
the miners themselves. No greater tribute 
could be paid to him as a President and as 
a man. 

60 



ROOSEVELT ADMINISTRATION 

CHAPTER III. 
THE VENEZUELAN AFFAIR. 

THE delicate diplomatic negotiations 
over the Venezuelan affair, in 1892- 
1893, began even while President 
Roosevelt was engrossed in the settlement 
of the anthracite coal strike. Thus it hap- 
pened that while he was protecting the 
rights and interests of the humblest labor- 
ers at home he was securing from the great 
powers of Europe a broader and more cor- 
dial recognition of the rights and interests 
of the nation. 

The issues involved in the quarrel be- 
tween Great Britain, Germany and Italy 
on the one hand and the turbulent little 
South American republic on the other 
trenched dangerously close to an attack 
upon the Monroe doctrine and a dispute 
with the United States. A diplomatic sit- 
uation was created which required delicate 
handling and at the same time an unf alter- 

61 



THE TRIUMPHS OF THE 

ing courage. President Roosevelt proved 
himself equal to the occasion. 

It is fair to state that when Great Brit- 
ain, and Germany, in their efforts to collect 
debts due their citizens from Venezuela, 
were forced to make actual war upon that 
republic, they had no purpose in attacking 
or undermining the ]!\Ionroe doctrine. The 
record on this point is clear, and, had not 
the unexpected attitude of Venezuela pre- 
cipitated a crisis it is likely that the United 
States would not have been involved in the 
controversy. 

Yet, as events turned out, a real and se- 
rious menace to the Monroe doctrine devel- 
oped. Great Britain and Germany expect- 
ed to be compelled to undertake nothing 
more than the seizure of one or two custom 
houses, to be held only until the duties col- 
lected on imports would equal the amount 
of their claims against Venezuela. To this 
procedure President Roosevelt would have 
offered no objection. He had secured 
pledges, oral and written, from both pow- 
ers, that the occupation of the Venezuelan 



ROOSEVELT ADMINISTRATION 

customs houses would be only temporary. 

The situation, however, developed along 
different and unexpected lines. Great Brit- 
ain and Germany found themselves face 
to face with the necessity of sending armies 
to Venezuela— armies of sufficient strength 
to march across rugged mountains and to 
capture an inland capital guarded by 200,- 
000 men. 

President Roosevelt refused to permit so 
serious a campaign by the armies of for- 
eign powers on the soil of an American re- 
public. He took the position that a war of 
such magnitude would have proved so cost- 
ly an enterprise that the nations involved 
in it might be compelled in sheer self- 
protection to occupy the territory of Vene- 
zuela for an indefinite period. The Pres- 
ident declined to permit the history of 
Egypt to be repeated on American soil. 
The inner history of the diplomatic ex- 
changes which compelled the powers to 
give up the campaign is yet to be written. 
Diplomacy does not work on the street cor- 
ners or on the housetops. It is only known 

63 



THE TRIUMPHS OF THE 

that Great Britain and Germany began 
war on Venezuela unexpectedly and 
stopped it as suddenly as it began. It is 
known that Admiral Dewey, with the most 
powerful squadron of battleships and cruis- 
ers that ever assembled in the Caribbean 
sea left the winter rendezvous off Culebra 
island, east of Porto Rico, and proceeded to 
the Island of Trinidad, within a few hours' 
steaming distance of the Venezuelan ports 
held under the menace of British and Ger- 
man guns. It is known that the allied 
fleets proclaimed a blockade and bombard- 
ed a few Venezuelan ports and then set- 
tled the main points of the controversy by 
agreement at Washington and submitted 
other points to the international tribunal 
at The Hague. 

It is not to be denied that no little un- 
easiness was manifested in the United States 
over the Venezuelan affairs. Newspapers 
and public speakers who took a superficial 
view of the incident asserted that the Eu- 
ropean powers had deliberately planned an 
attack upon the Monroe doctrine. The 



ROOSEVELT ADMINISTRATION 

facts do not justify this view. Great Brit- 
ian has never been seriously disposed to 
challenge the Monroe doctrine, and its gov- 
ernment in recent years has repeatedly an- 
nounced in state papers and in formal dec- 
laration in Parliament that it recognizes 
the full force of the principle. The atti- 
tude of the German government always has 
been strictly correct. 

And yet the situation undeniably lent 
itself to an attack upon the Monroe doc- 
trine. Venezuela owed large sums of money, 
not only to Germany, Italy and Great Brit- 
ain, but to France, Belgium, Spain, Nor- 
way, Sweden and The Netherlands. Never 
had so great an opportunity presented itself 
for the nations of Europe to make just and 
common cause against an American repub- 
lic, despite the restraints of the Monroe 
doctrine, and to unite in seizing and hold- 
ing American soil. 

Fortunately President Roosevelt was a 
man quick to realize the opportunity that 
had presented itself to Europe. He was 
equally quick to see the menace to the Mon- 

65 



THE TRIUMPHS OF THE 

roe doctrine implied. He was equally 
prompt to take energetic measures to up- 
hold the American principle. 

A careful examination of the facts leads 
to the suspicion that Germany deliberately 
forced a quarrel upon Venezuela. For 
years that South American republic had 
been rent by revolution and civil war. It 
had defaulted in its interest due on the 
foreign loan, and it confronted an enormous 
aggregate of claims from German, English, 
French and other foreign citizens for prop- 
erty lost during the civil wars. When Pres- 
ident Castro restored peace in 1895 he took 
up the settlement of these foreign claims. 
France presented claims for $10,800,000, 
Germany for $2,140,000, and Italy for $67,- 
000. The claims made by citizens of other 
nationalities were indefinite. 

Venezuela had no difficulty in reaching 
a settlement with her largest creditor, 
France. A treaty of commerce and navi- 
gation was signed and all the French claims 
referred to the arbitration of Senor Leon y 
Castillo, the Spanish ambassador at Paris, 

66 



ROOSEVELT ADMINISTRATION 

who was to act with one representative of 
France and one of Venezuela. On April 
18, 1902, France and Venezuela signed a 
protocol accepting the decision of the arbi- 
trator, and the payment of a debt of $10,- 
800,000 arranged for without friction, with- 
out threats and without a display of naval 
force, the bombardment of seaports and 
the killing of innocent men and women. 

German claims amounted to only $2,- 
140,000. President Castro ordered the sub- 
mission of these claims to a Venezuelan 
commission for examination. The claims 
were for alleged damage to the property of 
German citizens by the armies of the va- 
rious revolutionary outbreaks, for goods 
supplied to the troops, from requisitions 
made in war time, looting and forced loans. 
Many of them were extravagantly exor- 
bitant. Many of them were based on mere 
assertions. 

On January 24, 1901, the Venezuelan 
government ordered the claims referred to 
a commission, with right of appeal to the 
Venezuelan supreme court. Germany re- 

67 



THE TRIUMPHS OF THE 

fused to abide by this arrangement, ex- 
amined the claims herself, and peremptor- 
ily demanded payment. 

The English claims were of a different 
character and involved, in addition to 
money claims, a dispute over the posses- 
sion of the Island of Patos, off the Vene- 
zuelan coast. 

On July 23, 1902, England suggested to 
Germany joint action to obtain satisfac- 
tion from Venezuela. Germany proposed 
a naval demonstration. But Germany in- 
sisted further that British and German 
claims should stand or fall together, that 
neither claim could be settled without a 
satisfactory settlement of the other, and 
that neither government should be at liber- 
ty to recede except by mutual agreement. 
Great Britain agreed. 

No English statesman in modern times 
has been more severely criticised by his own 
people than was Lord Lansdowne, the Brit- 
ish minister of foreign affairs, for signing 
such an agreement with Germany. Eng- 
lish newspapers, when the real significance 



ROOSEVELT ADMINISTRATION 

became known, declared in so many words 
that Great Britain had been trapped bjr 
Germany, and that in consequence Great 
Britain had been compelled to assume an 
attitude distasteful to the people of the 
United States. But the agreement had 
been signed and England stood by her 
word to Germany and the preparations for 
a naval demonstration began. 

Germany consulted the United States be- 
fore acting. Ambassador Von Holleben 
called at the state department and assured 
Secretary Hay that Germany and England 
contemplated nothing more than the usual 
course of procedure. The assurances of 
the German ambassador were accepted as 
coming from a friendly power. The sit- 
uation was not a new one in the history of 
the relations between foreign governments 
and the little fire-eating, debt-evading re- 
publics of South and Central America. 
President Cleveland had permitted the 
English to seize the port of Corinto, on the 
west coast of Nicaragua, and hold it until 
claims against that government had been 



THE TRIUMPHS OF THE 

adjusted. lu so doing President Cleveland 
in no way endangered the Monroe doctrine, 
for he had been assured that British occu- 
pation of Corinto would cease the instant 
British claims had been adjusted. 

In the Venezuelan affair Secretary Hay 
only followed the usual rule. He made it 
clear to the German ambassador that for- 
eign occupation of a Venezuelan port, if 
made necessaiy by the exigencies of the af- 
fair, could at most be only temporary and 
that the United States would assume the 
right to judge circumstances as they devel- 
oped and to interfere whenever the ^lonroe 
doctrine was in apparent danger of in- 
fringement. 

Events proved that Germany and Great 
Britain were compelled to go beyond the 
assurances given to the United States. In 
a written memorandum left with Secretary 
Hay, the German ambassador. Dr. Von Hol- 
leben said : 

**We declare especially that under no 
circumstances do we consider in our pro- 
ceedings the acquisition or the permanent 



ROOSEVELT ADMINISTRATION" 

occupation of Venezuelan territory. If the 
Venezuelan government should force us to 
the application of measures of coercion, we 
should have to consider if at this occasion 
we should ask likewise for a greater secur- 
ity for the fulfillment of the claims. After 
the posting of an ultimatum, first of all the 
blockade of the more important Venezuelan 
harbors would have to be considered as an 
appropriate measure of coercion. * * * 
If this measure does not seem efficient we 
should have to consider the temporary oc- 
cupation on our part of different Venezue- 
lan harbor places and the levying of duty 
in those places. '^ 

So far, so good. Germany had assured 
the .United States of a purpose to enforce 
only a peaceful blockade, and in the event 
of that measure failing to secure a settle- 
ment, the collection of duties on goods im- 
ported into Venezuela. President Roose- 
velt accepted these assurances of the Ger- 
man government. In a memorandum 
handed to Ambassador Von Holleben, he 
wrote : 

71 



THE TRIUMPHS OF THE 

' ' The President of the United States, ap- 
preciating the courtesy of the German gov- 
ernment in making him acquainted with 
the state of affairs referred to, and not re- 
garding himself as called upon to enter 
into the consideration of the claims in ques- 
tion, believes that no measures will be taken 
in this matter by the agents of the German 
government which are not in accordance 
with the well known purpose, above set 
forth, of his majesty, the German Emper- 
or.'' 

President Roosevelt's attitude toward the 
foreign governments involved in the con- 
troversy with Venezuela was strictly cor- 
rect. It was endorsed by such able Sena- 
tors as Cullom of Illinois, and Lodge of 
Massachusetts. It was upheld by the press 
of the United States. The consensus of 
opinion in the United States was correctly 
voiced by Senator Lodge when he said : 

''The attitude of the United States in 
reference to the question is made perfectly 
plain by President Roosevelt in his mes- 
sage. Under the Monroe doctrine this gov- 

72 



ROOSEVELT ADMINISTRATION 

eminent is permitted to intervene only to 
the extent of preventing acquisition of ter- 
ritory. The United States may keep a 
watchful eye on the course pursued by 
these foreign powers and see that there is 
no overstepping of the provisions named. 
Beyond that, the United States has no in- 
terest in the forcible collection of the Ven- 
ezuelan debt." 

But in spite of England and Germany's 
assurances of a pacific blockade and peace- 
ful coercion, events moved so rapidly on 
the Venezuelan coast that within a week 
after the policy of *' peaceful coercion" 
was put in force by the allied fleets, both 
Germany and Great Britain were engaged 
in actual war with Venezuela and the whole 
face of the controversy was altered. 

Germany and England miscalculated the 
strength of Venezuelan patriotism and the 
extent of Venezuelan courage. They had 
taken it for granted that Venezuela would 
tamely submit to the inevitable settlement 
under the frowning menace of the shotted 
guns of a formidable fleet. 

73 



THE TRIUMPHS OF THE 

But Venezuela did not submit tamely. 
Germany and England presented ultima- 
tums at Caracas on December 7, and with- 
drew their envoys. The effect was unex- 
pected and startling. President Castro de- 
fied the powers and the people of Venezue- 
la, regardless of revolutionary plots and 
party quarrels, rallied to his support. 

Events moved with startling rapidity, 
and in three days Germany and England, 
instead of conducting a peaceful blockade 
of the Venezuelan coast, were making 
actual war on an American republic. 

Venezuelan warships were seized and 
scuttled. Venezuelan ports were bombard- 
ed and non-combatants killed. President 
Castro called 250,000 men to arms and be- 
gan to fortify his seaports. He seized the 
German railroad from La Guayra to Cara- 
cas and made preparations to defend his 
capital. 

President Roosevelt instantly recognized 
the seriousness of the danger involved in 
the startling change in the situation. He 
saw, more quickly than any other states- 

71 





LESLIE M. SHAW, 
Secretary of the Treasury. 



EOOSEVELT ADMINISTRATION 

man in America or Europe, that unless 
Germany and England were restrained 
they would be compelled to land an army 
in Venezuela, to seize the capital and to 
hold it until Venezuela made a satisfactory 
settlement. Such a course involved indefi- 
nite occupation of the territory of an Amer- 
ican republic by a foreign power, and as 
such was a direct and flagrant violation of 
the letter and spirit of the Monroe doc- 
trine. 

With President Roosevelt, to realize 
quickly was to act quickly. On the night of 
December 14, the ambassadors of Germany 
and Great Britain were handed memoran- 
dums to the effect: 

**It must be understood that the United 
States could not give its consent to any ex- 
tension of the international right of peace- 
ful blockade. ' ' 

In other words, Germany and Great 
Britain were informed that the United 
States would not permit them to punisH 
Venezuela, nor would they be permitted to 

75 



THE TRIUMPHS OF THE 

go beyond the limits of a peaceful block- 
ade. 

President Roosevelt had given the Mon- 
roe doctrine a new and broader interpreta- 
tion. He recognized the right of all nations 
to collect debts justly due from American 
republics, but he declared plainly that Eu- 
ropean powers could not make war upon 
an American republic without the consent 
of the United States. 

The President 's plain warning compelled 
the allies to abandon their campaign 
against Venezuela. There was no more 
talk of seizing ports and customs houses. 
All ideas of sending German and English 
soldiers to occupy the territory of the Southi 
American republic were given up. 

More than that, the President's prompt 
decision nearly caused a rupture of friend- 
ly relations between England and Ger- 
many. English press and public declared 
that England had been led blindly by Ger- 
many. The debates in the British House of 
Commons and the merciless criticism of the 
London press proved that Premier Bal- 



ROOSEVELT ADMINISTRATION 

four and Lord Lansdowne had been made 
the unwitting victims of Germany's supe- 
rior diplomacy. President Roosevelt's 
startling warning showed British states- 
men where their government stood. 

England's reply came without an in- 
stant's hesitation. On December 16, two 
days after the British ambassador in Lon- 
don had been informed that the United 
States could not permit the powers to go 
beyond the limits of a peaceful blockade 
of the Venezuelan coast, the British house 
rang with cheers when Lord Cranborne 
under secretary of state for foreign af- 
fairs, declared that Great Britain would as- 
sist in upholding and maintaining the Mon- 
roe doctrine. 

From that day forward the Venezuelan 
adventure was doomed to failure. England 
would have no more of it. True, England 
held to her agreement with Germany to 
the extent of keeping her fleet in Venezue- 
lan waters, but the British ships contented 
themselves with maintaining a strictly 
peaceful blockade, waiting for Germany 



THE TRIUMPHS OF THE 

and Italy to agree to proposals to submit 
the entire dispute to arbitration. 

At Rome no secret was made of the be- 
lief that Italy was participating in the 
first European attack upon the Monroe 
doctrine. Press comment and parliament- 
ary debate proved the satisfaction and 
pride of the Italian people in the part their 
government was taking in the first organ- 
ized effort by the powers in breaking down 
the barrier to European acquisition of ter- 
ritory on the American continent. 

Germany did not realize that the game 
was lost until four days had followed Pres- 
ident Roosevelt's warning. In those four 
days Germany awakened to public senti- 
ment in the United States. American cor- 
respondents of leading German newspa- 
pers cabled circumstantial reports of anti- 
German feeling in the big republic. One 
New York correspondent declared that 
German}^ seemingly was without a friend 
in the United States. Others declared that 
Germany was accused of designs to secure 

78 



ROOSEVELT ADMINISTRATION 

territory in Venezuela in defiance of the 
Monroe doctrine. 

These statements produced a feeling of 
profound astonishment in German official 
and business circles. This feeling resulted 
in a general protest that Germany cared 
more for friendly relations with the United 
States than it did for the satisfaction of 
humiliating even so insolent a state as Ven- 
ezuela. The revulsion of sentiment was 
quickly felt at the foreign office and Ger- 
many reluctantly agreed to submit the 
Venezuelan affair to arbitration. 

President Roosevelt had saved the sit- 
uation. He had protected the Monroe doc- 
trine, even to the extent of sending Ad- 
miral Dewey with practically the entire ef- 
fective naval strength of the United States 
to Trinidad within a few hours' steaming 
of the blockaded Venezuelan coast. 

Diplomatically, Germany's assurances 
of respect for the IMonroe doctrine were 
strictly correct. The United States was 
assured all along that Germany had no de- 
signs upon Venezuelan territory. Presi- 

79 



THE TRIUMPHS OF THE 

dent Roosevelt had accepted these assur- 
ances as having been made in perfect good 
faith. 

But there was a grave danger to the 
Monroe doctrine that even the diplomatic 
assurances of Germany could not avert. 
Venezuela's temper had been aroused to 
the fighting point. Once embarked in a 
land campaign, Germany and England 
could have conquered Venezuela only by 
landing from 50,000 to 150,000 men- 
Venezuela had called 250,000 men to arms. 
The campaign in the mountains of Vene- 
zuela would have consumed months and 
have cost several hundred millions of dol- 
lars. 

How were Germany and England to be 
indemnified for so tremendous an expendi- 
ture ? Under the terms of their assurances 
to the United States they could recoup 
themselves only by the indefinite occupa- 
tion of Venezuelan soil and the indefinite 
collection of duties on imports at Ven- 
ezuelan harbors. 

80 



ROOSEVELT ADMINISTRATION 

England's occupation of Egypt atfords 
too striking an object lesson to be over- 
looked even by a man less skilled in states- 
manship than Theodore Roosevelt. 

The story of the final settlement of the 
Venezuelan controversy need not be told 
here. Suffice it to say that it was settled 
by negotiation at V^ashington and by ref- 
erence to The Hague. 

President Roosevelt's conduct of the af- 
fair enabled the United States as well as 
Europe to take their first measure of his 
genius as a statesman. It was the first 
great international crisis with which he 
had to deal. He met it with a clearness 
of vision, a wisdom that would have been 
creditable to a chancellor skilled in years 
of diplomacy, and with a courage that did 
not shrink even in the presence of the 
knowledge that one mistake, one deviation 
from the dictates of good judgment and 
sound policy would have involved the 
United States in complications that might 
have led to war with United Europe. 

81 



THE TRIUMPHS OF THE 

Theodore Roosevelt thus proved his 
statesmanship ahnost at the outset of his 
administration. The Venezuelan affair 
was, as events finally proved, insignificant ; 
but for the time being it was fraught with 
the danger that sometimes decides the fate 
of empires. And when the Venezuelan in- 
cident was closed Germany and England 
and with them the other powers of Europe 
had accorded an official recognition of the 
Monroe doctrine they had never given be- 
fore and had given it without rancor, and 
with the full understanding that for all 
time the United States was the dominant 
power on the new hemisphere. 



82 



ROOSEVELT ADMINISTRATIOIS' 

CHAPTER IV. 

ALASKAN BOUNDARY SETTLE- 
MENT. 

PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT proved 
the high qualities of his statesman- 
ship by the wisdom and courage 
with which he settled the Venezuelan af- 
fair. His success in ending the Alaskan 
boundary dispute was even a greater dip- 
lomatic trimnph. 

Prior to 1897 the Alaskan boundary 
question was regarded by Canada with only 
a languid interest. To the statesmen at 
Ottawa the settlement of the controversy 
was only a matter of a surveying party 
with a chain and a few stakes. But in 1897 
gold was found along the banks of Klon- 
dike creek in the British Northwest Terri- 
tory, and in three months 50,000 excited 
prospectors rushed into the region. The 
Klondike gold fields promised to equal the 
mines of the Rand in the Transvaal. 
The gold was there, in immense quantities.. 

83 



THE TRIUMPHS OF THE 

The United States controlled the only 
sea gates to the Klondike gold fields. The 
rush of prospectors passed through the 
American ports of Dyea and Skaguay at 
the head of Lynn canal. Those ports were 
in the narrow strip of territory long but in- 
differently claimed by Canada. 

Canada's interest in the Alaskan bound- 
ary question suddenly warmed, and in 
less than a year after the discovery of gold 
in the Klondike fields the Canadian press, 
backed by the Canadian government, was 
declaring, vehemently and persistently, 
that the ports of Dyea and Skaguay be- 
longed to Canada. 

Canada's claims were received in the 
United States with smiles of incredulity 
and were promptly characterized as ab- 
surd. But the Canadians were frantically 
in earnest. They threatened embargoes on 
American goods and retaliation on Ameri- 
can tariffs. They ordered a hea\y tax on 
all gold taken from Klondike claims by 
American miners. Some of the more excit- 
able even indulged in noisy talk of war. 

8i 



ROOSEVELT ADMINISTRATION 

More than once in the history of the last 
100 years have the United States and Great 
Britain been brought to the verge of war 
by disputes over the boundary line between 
British and American possessions in the 
North American continent. One of the 
most tedious and interesting disputes be- 
tween the United States and Great Britain 
came over the boundary from the St. Croix 
river along the ]\Iaine-New York frontier to 
the St. Lawrence. A commission tried to 
settle the dispute and failed. Then it was 
referred to the arbitration of the King of 
The Netherlands. Both countries rejected 
his decision and the quarrel was renewed 
with greater intensity of feeling than ever. 
Then a modus-vivendi established a tem- 
porary boundary line which was ignored by 
the people on both sides. 

The border warfare which followed 
brought the United States and Great Brit- 
ain so close to war that congress author- 
ized the President to call out the militia 
and voted $10,000,000 for national defense. 
General Winfield Scott, commander-in- 

85 



THE TRIUMPHS OF THE 

chief of the army, was sent to the frontier, 
and war was all but declared. Happily, 
however, General Scott had been trained 
in the rough diplomacy of war and he was 
able to arrange a temporary truce which 
led, after some further delays, to a perma- 
nent treaty, signed in 1842. 

Again, the boundary from the Rocky 
mountains to the Pacific nearly brought the 
countries into war. The United States 
claimed the whole territory along the Pa- 
cific from California to the Russian pos- 
sessions, at 54 degrees 40 minutes, and in 
the national campaign in 1844, ''Fifty- 
four forty or figlit," was the watchword. 
President Polk was elected on this issue, 
but his secretary of state, James Buchanan, 
signed a treaty with the British minister, 
yielding all of British Columbia to Great 
Britain, although American rights to the 
whole territory had been declared to be un- 
questionable by the democratic national 
convention and by a democratic president. 

In 1859 the United States again had to 
face the possibility of war over the pos- 

83 



ROOSEVELT ADMINISTRATION 

session of San Juan island, near Vancou- 
ver, and again General Winfield Scott was 
to settle the dispute, without war if possi- 
ble, but with war if necessary. Again the 
bluif soldier arranged a truce, which con- 
tinued until 1871, when the decision of the 
Emperor of Germany, to whom the dispute 
had been referred, gave San Juan island to 
the United States. 

Therefore, Canada's threats of war over 
the Alaskan boundary, while never regard- 
ed seriously in the United States, or, for 
that matter in Great Britain, proved that 
irritation sufficient for a serious quarrel 
existed. 

Canada insisted on submitting the Alas- 
kan boundary to an arbitration tribunal. 
This was natural enough, perhaps, for Can- 
ada had nothing to lose. But the Ameri- 
can people, without party distinction, op- 
posed arbitration. The United States had 
been in peaceful and practically undis- 
puted possession of the territory since 1867. 
Prior to that year Russia had held undis- 
puted possession since 1825. "Why should 

87 



THE TRIUMPHS OF THE 

the United States arbitrate over the pos- 
session of her own territory? 

But Canada was terribly in earnest. 
There were only two ways of reaching the 
Klondike— one by the Yukon river, which 
was open only during a short time during 
the summer, and the other by the Lynn 
canal and a long portage across the moun- 
tains. The Yukon route was entirely with- 
in American territory until the edge of the 
Klondike gold field was reached. Miners 
going by the Lynn canal and starting from 
Dyea or Skaguay passed over ' American 
territory until they reached the summit of 
the mountains, where they reached the Ca- 
nadian line and became subject to Cana- 
dian tariffs and Canadian laws. The Klon- 
dike region could not successfully be ap- 
proached wholly on British territory. The 
trail from the inhabited portions of Brit- 
ish Columbia was long and terrible, and 
most of the hardy Canadian prospectors 
who tried it died on the way. 

It was evident, therefore, that while the 
British government actually owned the 

88 



ROOSEVELT ADMINISTRATION 

Klondike gold field it could not get to it 
except by passing through territory owned 
by the United States. British mining sup- 
plies would have to be brought into the 
United States, pay duties at Dyea or Skag- 
uay and then be taken back into British 
territory. This gave the United States con- 
trol of the food question and the food ques- 
tion controlled the Klondike gold fields. 

It became absolutely necessary for the 
Canadians to find a gateway to the sea 
without striking a custom house flying the 
American flag. Therefore Canadians be- 
gan to study the maps of Alaska, and to 
look up the treaties covering the various 
transfers of Alaska. 

As a result of their hasty study the Ca- 
nadians claimed that the American ports 
of Dyea and Skaguay were on British soil. 
The preposterous claim advanced so un- 
expectedly by Canada necessarily leads to 
a brief review of the several treaties cover- 
ing the sea frontier of Alaska. 

In 1821 a Russian ukase asserted a claim 
to exclusive jurisdiction of a tract of ocean 

89 



THE TRIUMPHS OF THE 

100 miles from the mainland of Northeast- 
ern Asia, and a similar distance from the 
northwest coast of North America, which 
long had been occupied by Russian fur 
traders. In. addition Russia asserted that 
its strip of coast, now known as the Alaska 
pan handle, ran down among the fringe of 
islands of the fifty-first parallel, north lati- 
tude. This claim deprived British Colum- 
bia of access to the Pacific ocean. 

Right here is a point which has frequent- 
ly been overlooked in all discussion of the 
Alaskan boundary dispute. Russia's claim 
of 1821 brought that empire into dispute 
with the United States, which at that time 
claimed that the territory of Oregon ex- 
tended along the Pacific coast north to the 
55th degree of north latitude. Russia, 
therefore, claimed 250 miles of coast also 
claimed by the United States. The United 
States promptly protested, and as Russia 
was not in position to back up her extrav- 
agant claim she signed a treaty with the 
United States in 1824, withdrawing all 

90 




HKXRY C. PAYi\E, 
I'o.stniaster-Geueral. 



ROOSEVELT ADMINISTRATION 

claims to the Pacific coast south of the 
fifty-fifth parallel of latitude. 

In the following year, 1825, Russia and 
the United States signed a treaty deter- 
mining the boundary between Russian 
possessions in Alaska and the British 
Northwest territory. This treaty defined 
the boundaries of the territory sold by Rus- 
sia to the United States in 1867. 

On the surface this treaty was so plain 
that no one not seeking a basis for an un- 
just quarrel would hardly misinterpret it. 
The boundary remained without dispute 
from 1825 until 1898. Under the treaty 
of 1825, the boundary line ran from the 
southernmost point of Prince of Wales is- 
land, north along Portland Channel to the 
fifty-sixth degree of north latitude, 
then northward, following the summits 
of the mountains parallel to the coast. It 
was expressly stated that wherever the 
summits of the mountains shall prove to 
be at a distance of more than ten marine 
leagues from the ocean the line should be 
formed by a line parallel to the windings 

ei 



THE TRIUMPHS OF THE 

(sinuosities) of the coast, never exceeding 
the distance of ten marine leagues there- 
from. This was the boundary agreed upon 
by Russia and the United States -when the 
latter purchased Alaska in 1867. 

In 1898 the Canadians suddenly discov- 
ered that the treaty did not mean what it 
said. They asserted that whereas the 
treaty said ''Portland Channel," it meant 
*'Behm Channel," and that where the 
treaty referred to the windings of the coast 
it did not mean *' coast," but islands. This 
was the only basis for the claims made so 
excitedly by Canada after gold had been 
discovered in the Klondike. But Canada 
was hunting for a tide water port. 

Thus the dispute began. Canada first 
insisted that the thirty-mile strip should 
be measured from the outside (western) 
line of the string of islands that fringes 
the Alaskan pan handle. This, of course, 
would have deprived the United States of 
practically the Alaskan mainland south of 
Mount St. Elias. It would have moved 

92 



ROOSEVELT ADMINISTRATION 

Dyea, Skaguay, Juneau and other principal 
ports into British territory. 

This claim was so absurdly extravagant 
that it was laughed out of court. Canada 
was forced by sheer ridicule to drop it. 

Then the persistent Canadians, with their 
eyes still fixed on the coveted ports of Dyea 
and Skaguay, advanced a new claim. A 
glance at a map of Alaska shows that the 
Alaska pan handle is intersected by numer- 
ous great bays. Although all geographers 
and statesmen conceded that the ocean 
boundary followed the windings of the 
coast, because the treaty specifically so de- 
clared, the Canadian geographers of the 
new school advanced the claim that the 
great bays on the Alaskan coast should be 
disregarded, and that the ''general coast 
line" should be assumed to jump from 
headland to headland. 

It was upon this adroit bit of geograph- 
ical quibbling that Canada proposed to 
base a suit before a court of arbitration. 
The United States naturally refused. Pres- 
ident Roosevelt refused to submit claims to 

93 



THE TRIUMHPS OF THE 

territory so long held by the United States 
in undisputed possession to the final decis- 
ion of a tribunal which would have called 
in a foreign empire. 

Canada having everything to gain and 
nothing to lose, persisted in her demands 
for arbitration. President Koosevelt as 
persistently refused. Finally Canada sug- 
gested a compromise. 

"You keep Dyea and Skaguay and give 
us P^Tamid harbor/' said the Canadians. 

This was very much as if the United 
States had laid claim to the south coast of 
England and offering to compromise by 
suggesting that England keep Portsmouth 
and Plymouth, but give Southampton to 
the United States. 

Finally, President Roosevelt, in the ne- 
gotiations with the British ambassador at 
"Washington, stated his willingness to sub- 
mit the controversy to a tribunal of six 
men— three to be named by the United 
States and the other three by the British 
government. If the six men could reach a 
decision the President was willing to abide 

94 



ROOSEVELT ADMINISTRATION 

by it; but he would not consent to the se- 
lection of a seventh man as umpire. 

President Roosevelt's proposal was re- 
ceived with a storm of indignation in Can- 
ada, and with a feeling of uneasiness in the 
United States. In this country a large 
number of citizens — possibly a majority^ 
were opposed to arbitration in any form. 
But even their opposition to arbitration did 
not shake the people's faith in the Presi- 
dent, and as later developments proved, 
their confidence was not misplaced. 

The British ambassador accepted Presi- 
dent Roosevelt's proposal and a formal 
treaty was signed. The senate ratified the 
treaty. The President lost no time in put- 
ting the treaty into effect. With hardly 
any delay he named as the American mem- 
bers of the commission Elihu Root of New 
York, secretary of war; Henry Cabot 
Lodge, senator of the United States from 
i^.Tassachusetts, and George Turner, late 
senator of the United States from the state 
of Washington. 

05 



THE TRIUMPHS OF THE 

The Canadian government objected to 
the personnel of the American commission, 
complaining to the British colonial office 
that the men named by the President were 
not 'impartial jurists of repute," as con- 
templated by the treaty. The British gov- 
ernment, however, did not regard the Ca- 
nadian complaint as serious. 

There was some criticism of the com- 
mission in the United States, the assertion 
being made that President Roosevelt should 
have named judges of the supreme court. 
It is due to the President to state, however, 
that he offered a place on the commission 
to two justices of the supreme court. One 
declined, it is understood, on the ground 
that he did not regard the post as in the 
line of his duty. The other gave a similar 
reason. 

The British government named as its 
members of the commission, Baron Alver- 
stone, lord chief justice of England; Sir 
Louis A. Jette, lieutenant governor of Que- 
bec, and Judge John D. Armour, judge of 
the supreme court of Canada. Judge Ar- 

96 



ROOSEVELT ADMINISTRATION 

mour died soon after his appointment and 
the vacancy was filled by A. B. Aylesworth, 
a prominent member of the Toronto bar. 

Details of the deliberations of the tri- 
bunal need not be given here. The joint 
commission held its first session in London 
on September 3, 1903. The vast masses of 
documentary evidence accumulated on both 
sides had already been placed in the tri- 
bunal's hands. The oral arguments began 
on September 12, and continued for eight- 
een days, with few intermissions. The tri- 
bunal went into secret session on October 8, 
and on October 20 its decision was deliv- 
ered to the officers of the respective govern- 
ments. Lord Alverstone united with the 
three American commissioners in declar- 
ing that the boundary line always claimed 
by the United States was correct. The two 
Canadian commissioners refused to sign 
the decision, but it was gracefully, if not 
cheerfully, accepted by the Canadian gov- 
ernment. 

The result of the Alaskan boundary ar- 
bitration has been declared to be the great- 

97 



THE TRIUMPHS OF THE 

est diplomatic victory won by the United 
States within the present generation, and 
historians both in the United States and 
Great Britain unite in giving the credit to 
President Roosevelt, who had the courage 
to submit the question to the award of a 
judicial tribunal. It is but fair to say that 
the President in agreeing to arbitrate did 
so against the best judgment of many of 
the wisest men in the nation. But he knew 
the claims of the United States were just, 
right and unassailable in any court of jus- 
tice. He realized, too, that the question 
would be a constant irritant between the 
United States and Canada as long as it re- 
mained unsettled. With his characteristic 
courage and willingness to assume risks in 
order to demonstrate fair play he resolved 
to settle a vexatious dispute for all time to 
come, and he did. 



96 



ROOSEVELT ADMINISTRATION 

CHAPTER V. 
RECIPROCITY FOR CUBA. 

WHILE he was engrossed with the 
perplexing details of the negotia- 
tions over the settlement of the 
Venezuelan affair President Roosevelt 
never for an instant relaxed his efforts to 
secure for the new Cuban republic those 
commercial advantages which virtually had 
been pledged to her by the United States. 
From the very beginning of his administra- 
tion he contended that the honor of the na- 
tion was involved in the granting of a re- 
ciprocity treaty to Cuba. In insisting upon 
this his purpose ran counter to the opinions 
of many leading men in his own party ; but 
even the opposition of republican leaders 
and republican newspapers failed to move 
him from his high conception of national 
honor. A man less courageous would have 
shrunk from so formidable an opposition 
within the ranks of his own party. But 

99 



THE TRIUMPHS OF THE 

the President was persistent without being 
obstinate. He neither coaxed, cajoled nor 
threatened. He simply pointed to congress 
again and again the path along which its 
obvious duty lay. 

And he won. His victory was all the 
greater by reason of the fact that it was 
won by the aid of his party and without 
laying the foundation for party differences. 
He won with the approval of his party, of 
the press and of the people. 

The story of President Roosevelt's vic- 
tory for national honor forms one of the 
most interesting chapters in the history of 
his first administration. In his first mes- 
sage to congress written within three 
months after he had succeeded to the presi- 
dency, he urged a Cuban reciprocity meas- 
ure. He said : 

''In the case of Cuba there are weighty 
reasons of morality and of national inter- 
est why the policy (of reciprocity) should 
be held to have a peculiar application, and 
I most earnestly ask your attention to the 
wisdom, indeed, to the vital need, of pro- 

100 



ROOSEVELT ADMINISTRATION 

viding for a substantial reduction in the 
tariff duties on Cuban imports into the 
United States. Cuba has, in her constitu- 
tion, affirmed what we desired, and we are 
bound by every consideration of honor and 
expediency to pass commercial measures in 
the interest of her material welfare. ' ' 

Congress took up the question of Cuban 
reciprocity with neither alacrity nor en- 
thusiasm. The ways and means committee 
framed a bill granting a tariff reduction of 
20 per cent, on all Cuban imports, on con- 
dition that the Cuban government adopt the 
immigration and contract labor laws of the 
United States. The republican majority in 
the committee did not act in harmony, and 
it was reported to the house through the 
votes of some of the democratic minority 
members. 

A strong republican opposition to the bill 
developed in congress. The source of the 
opposition, it was soon discovered, was in 
the beet sugar growing interests of IMichi- 
gan, Minnesota, Nebraska, Colorado, Utah 
and California. 

101 



THE TRIUMPHS OF THE 

The republican opponents of Cuban re- 
ciprocity—and they represented in the 
main the beet sugar growing states— raised 
the cry that the reciprocity proposal would 
benefit the sugar trust. The charge after- 
ward was proven to be without foundation, 
but it served its purpose. Long before the 
congressional session of the spring of 1902 
was ready to adjourn it was evident to the 
republicans who had stood by President 
Roosevelt in his plea for the fulfillment 
of the implied pledges of the United States 
to Cuba, that the bill reported from the 
ways and means committee could not be 
passed. The President reluctantly decided 
to abandon the effort. The President did 
not propose to abandon his fight for Cuban 
reciprocity. He determined to secure it 
by another method— by the negotiation of 
a reciprocity treaty with Cuba. 

Before congress adjourned, however, 
President Roosevelt sent in a special mes- 
sage on the subject. In it he reviewed the 
pledges made to Cuba and the efforts made 
by President McKinley to carry out 

103 



KOOSEVELT ADMINISTRATION 

the compact with the new republic. The 
message was sent to congress on June 13, 
and in it the President said in part : 

''Some of our citizens oppose the lower- 
ing of the tariff on Cuban products, just 
as three years ago they opposed the admis- 
sion of the Hawaiian Islands, lest free 
trade with them might ruin certain of our 
interests here. In the actual event their 
fears proved baseless. Their apprehension 
as to the damage to any industry of our 
own because of the proposed measure of 
reciprocity with Cuba seems to me equally 
baseless. In my judgment no American in- 
dustry will be hurt, and many American in- 
dustries will be benefited by the proposed 
action. It is to our advantage as a nation 
that the growing Cuban market should be 
controlled by the American producers. 

tF *7r tF 

''We are a wealthy and powerful nation; 
Cuba is a young republic, still weak, who 
owes to us her birth, whose future, whose 
very life, must depend upon our attitude 
toward her. I ask that we help her as she 

103 



THE TRIUMPHS OF THE 

struggles along the painful and difficult 
road of self-governing independence. I ask 
this aid for her because she is weak, because 
she needs it, because we have already aided 
her. I ask that open-handed help, of a 
kind which a self-respecting people can ac- 
cept, be given to Cuba, for the very reason 
that we have given her such help in the 
past. 

''Our soldiers fought to give her free- 
dom; and for three years our representa- 
tives, civil and military, have toiled un- 
ceasingly, facing disease of a peculiarly 
sinister and fatal type, with patient and 
uncomplaining fortitude, to teach her how 
to use aright her new freedom. Never in 
history has any alien country been thus ad- 
ministered with such high integrity of pur- 
pose, such wise judgment, and such single- 
minded devotion. Now I ask that the Cu- 
bans be given all possible chance to use the 
freedom which Americans have such right 
to be proud of, and for which so many 
American lives have been sacrificed.'* 

104 



ROOSEVELT ADMINISTRATION 

The President's message was sent to con- 
gress with the knowledge that its plea for 
Cuba would fail. He knew that congress 
had rejected his proposed policy; and yet 
there was no trace of resentment, no hint 
of disappointment, no tinge of bitterness. 

Congress adjourned and the President 
faced a delicate party situation. He felt 
that he was right. He believed that the 
people of the United States upheld his pol- 
icy. A less greater man would have sought 
to force an unwelcome policy upon con- 
gress by cajolery, by pressure, by threat of 
withholding patronage. Theodore Roose- 
velt was not such a man. Through all the 
trying period in which he faced a majority 
in congress hostile to his policy he main- 
tained the correct attitude of an executive 
of a republic in which the people's repre- 
sentatives make laws or refuse to make 
laws, according to the dictates of their best 
judgment. 

Confident in the fairness and justice of 
his policy, the President appealed to the 
people, and subsequent events proved that 

105 



THE TRIUMPHS OF THE 

his confidence was not misplaced. Repub- 
lican state conventions in practically every 
state in the Union upheld his policy. There 
were a few exceptions where state interests 
seemed to be menaced by the proposal to 
admit Cuban products into the United 
States at lower rates of duty. 

The republicans of Connecticut, at Hart- 
ford, on September 17, commended the ad- 
ministration of President Roosevelt, and 
even at that early date, favored his renom- 
ination, saying: 

''Especially we commend the President's 
efforts to perform a plain duty and obtain 
for this country a lucrative commerce by 
arranging a judicious reciprocity treaty 
with Cuba.'' 

The Illinois republicans, at Springfield, 
on May 8, 1902, endorsed the President's 
policy and declared in favor of a reciprocal 
trade treaty with Cuba. 

At Indianapolis, on April 24, 1902, the 
Indiana republicans endorsed the President 
and favored *'just and liberal reciprocal 

106 




AiiorneyCeiU'riil. 



ROOSEVELT ADMINISTRATION 

relations between the United States and 
Cuba." 

Iowa republicans, at Des Moines, on July 
30, 1902, endorsed the President's adminis- 
tration in general and his Cuban reciproc- 
ity policy in particular, Kansas republic- 
ans did the same in their convention at 
Wichita on May 28, 1902. Similar declara- 
tions were made by Massachusetts repub- 
licans at Boston, on October 3, 1902; by 
Missouri republicans at Jefferson City on 
June 25, 1902. Republicans in Nebraska, 
New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode 
Island, Vermont and Wyoming took similar 
action. 

In Minnesota the republicans at their 
convention at St. Paul on July 1, endorsed 
the President's Cuban policy, saying: 

"We favor reciprocity with Cuba, urged 
by President Roosevelt, by a plan which 
will insure the profitable interchange of 
commodities, insure to the benefits of both 
nations, help the Cuban people needing as- 
sistance, but the chief benefits of which 
shall not enrich trusts, monopolies or for- 

107 



THE TRIUMPHS OF THE 

eign speculators, or which shall not inter- 
rupt our home production. ' ' 

President Roosevelt himself could ask no 
more. He went no further. His endorse- 
ment by the ^Minnesota republicans was all 
the more gratifying from the fact that 
Minnesota's republican representatives in 
congress were among the foremost of those 
who had opposed the reciprocity bill. 

The Michigan republican convention at 
Detroit on June 26 endorsed the Presi- 
dent's administration, but refrained from 
specifying the Cuban reciprocity measure. 
This was hardly to be expected, because 
IMichigan's congressmen had led the fight 
on the bill ; and the republican convention 
declined to administer a personal rebuke to 
men whose sincerity could not be doubted 
and whose motives in opposing Cuban reci- 
procity could not be assailed from the 
standpoint of the interests of their con- 
stituents. 

President Roosevelt was so confident that 
the voters of the United States would en- 
dorse his Cuban policy that he lost no time 

loe 



ROOSEVELT ADMINISTRATION 

in negotiating a reciprocity treaty. In 
November General Tasker H. Bliss, an ex- 
pert in tariff schedules, was sent to Havana 
as a minister plenipotentiary to negotiate 
a treaty which should provide for a hori- 
zontal reduction of United States tariff 
rates on Cuban products of at least 20, and 
perhaps 25 per cent., and a differential 
tariff in Cuba in favor of American goods, 
the latter to be effected not by a reduction 
of the existing Cuban tariff on American 
goods, but by an increase of it upon the 
goods of all other countries. This latter ar- 
rangement was recognized as necessary in 
order to maintain a sufficient revenue for 
the Cuban treasury. 

General Bliss for the United States, and 
Senors Carlos de Zaldo and Jose M. Garcia 
Montes representing Cuba, signed the reci- 
procity treaty at Havana on December 11, 
1902. 

The reciprocity treaty was laid before 
the senate at Washington without delay. 
But a new difficulty presented itself. The 
opposition to the principle of Cuban reci- 

109 



THE TRIUMPHS OF THE 

procity itself was less marked, perhaps, 
than in the previous session, but the new ob- 
jection was raised that the senate alone 
could not ratify a treaty making changes in 
tariff schedules, and thus impair the rev- 
enues. It was held that the house, in which 
all measures affecting the revenue must 
originate, necessarily would have to give 
its consent to the treaty. 

Ordinarily, treaties are ratified by the 
senate alone. From the foundation of the 
government it has been held that the treat}^ 
making power rests with the President and 
the senate. The right of the house to pass 
upon treaties has never been recognized. 

There were few precedents in the history 
of the government to guide President 
Roosevelt in reaching a decision on the 
question. During the administration of 
President Washington a treaty involving 
the revenues of the government was ne- 
gotiated and ratified by the senate. The 
lower house believed that its constitutional 
rights had been impaired and adopted a 
resolution calling on President "Washington 

110 



ROOSEVELT ADMINISTRATION 

to submit all the papers in the case to the 
house. President Washington refused, and 
not until the treaty was ratified by the sen- 
ate and officially proclaimed did he send a 
copy of it to the house ^'for its informa- 
tion." 

The same disputed question arose during 
the administration of James Madison, when 
he sent to the senate a commercial treaty 
with Great Britain, negotiated after the 
conclusion of the war of 1812. In his mes- 
sage transmitting the treaty President 
Madison recommended legislation by both 
house and senate to carry the treaty into 
effect. 

President Roosevelt, after a conference 
with leading members of the senate, de- 
cided to follow the precedent established by 
James Madison. It was agreed that the 
Cuban reciprocity treaty should first be 
sent to the senate. If it should be ratified 
by the necessary two-thirds vote the Presi- 
dent then would send a special message to 
congress recommending the passage of a 

111 



THE TRIUMPHS OF THE 

law to carry the provisions of the treaty 
into effect. 

The Cuban treaty was not to have plain 
sailing in the senate. First it aroused the 
hostility of some of the senators from the 
south, who declared that it was a blow 
aimed at two southern products, cane su- 
gar and tobacco. Senators Foster of Louis- 
iana and Taliaferro of Florida took the 
lead in this opposition from the south and 
they sought to consolidate the opposition 
to the treaty by inducing all the senators 
from the south to enter a caucus. This 
opposition looked serious at the time, as the 
ratification of the treaty depended upon 
the votes of all the republicans in the sen- 
ate with five or six democrats additional in 
order to secure the necessary two-thirds 
majority. 

Further, it soon became apparent that 
the treaty as presented to the senate could 
not be ratified until certain amendments 
had been agreed to. As originally drafted 
the treaty provided for a reduction of 20 
per cent, of the tariff rates then in effect 

113 



ROOSEVELT ADMINIS TRATION 

or afterwards to be put into effect. It was 
asserted that if there should be a revision 
of the tariff, or if the democrats should 
come into power while the treaty was in ef- 
fect and reduce the tariff rates 50 per cent., 
the Cuban sugar planters would derive the 
benefit. In order to prevent such a contin- 
gency it was proposed that the 20 per cent, 
reduction in tariff rates for the benefit of 
Cuba should continue in force only for five 
years. 

This amendment, as v/ell as one or two 
others, was not objectionable to President 
Roosevelt or to the friends of Cuba, and 
was agreed upon without friction. 

On January 14, the senate committee on 
foreign affairs agreed to an amendment 
providing that the reduction of 20 per cent, 
in the tariff on Cuban sugar should not be 
further reduced by any preferential rate 
given to another country. To be more ex- 
plicit the text of the amendment may be 
quoted : 

"Provided, That while this convention 
is in force, no sugar being the product of 

113 



THE TRIUMPHS OF THE 

the soil of the republic of Cuba shall be ex- 
ported from said republic to the United 
States at a greater reduction of duty than 
20 per cent, below the rates prescribed by 
the act of July 24, 1897 ; and provided fur- 
ther, that while this convention is in force 
no sugar shall be imported into the United 
States from any foreign country at a lower 
rate of duty than that imposed by the act 
of July 24, 1897." 

On the following day another amendment 
was adopted by the senate committee on 
foreign relations providing for a reduction 
of 40 per cent, in the duty on American 
cattle imported into Cuba instead of 20 per 
cent. With these two amendments the 
treaty was reported to the senate on the 
same day, January 16, 1903. 

From this time forward there was little 
doubt that the senate would ratify the 
treaty. On January 17 Senator Burrows of 
Michigan, who had, in 1902, opposed reci- 
procity with Cuba, assured the President 
that the treaty would have the support, 
with possibly one exception, of the nineteen 

114 



ROOSEVELT ADMINISTRATION 

senators who had opposed reciprocity a year 
before. 

The debate in the senate continued until 
March 19, 1903, when the treaty as amend- 
ed was ratified by a vote of 50 to 16. All 
the affirmative votes were cast by repub- 
licans, with ten democrats. The negative 
votes were all democratic except one, Mr. 
Bard of California. 

The amended treaty was returned to 
Cuba for a ratification in its amended form 
and in the meantime President Roosevelt 
announced that he would call a special ses- 
sion of congress in the fall for the purpose 
of urging legislation to carry the provis- 
ions of the treaty into effect. The Cuban 
senate ratified the amended treaty on 
March 29, and there the matter necessarily 
rested. 

The special session met on November 9, 
and on the following day the President's 
message urging prompt action. It had 
been well understood that the special ses- 
sion had been called for the purpose of 
passing a Cuban reciprocity treaty and it 

115 



THE TRIUMPHS OF THE 

was equally understood by the country at 
large that President Roosevelt had won his 
battle. The ways and means committee 
acted promptly and the bill was reported. 
The opposition was only nominal and all 
amendments were voted down promptly. 
On November 19, ten days after the ses- 
sion opened, the Cuban tariff bill passed 
the house by a vote of 385 to 21. A roll' 
call was not necessary. 

No vote in the recent history of congress 
has shown so remarkable a reversal of sen- 
timent. On June 13, 1902, the President, 
in a message almost pathetic in its plea for 
justice and fair treatment for a young re- 
public, just taking its place among the na- 
tions of the world after a long and exhaust- 
ing war for independence, appealed to the 
republican majority in the house for lower 
tariff duties for Cuba. The appeal fell 
upon unheeding ears. On December 19, 
1903, less than two years later, the house, 
still with a republican majority, gave Cuba 
a reciprocity tariff by a vote that was to all 
intents and purposes a unanimous one. No 

116 



ROOSEVELT ADMINISTRATION 

more striking tribute to the statesman-like 
qualities of the President could have been 
paid him. To persistently advocate a wise 
national policy in the face of opposition is 
one thing, but to advocate a wise policy 
and to convert a hostile majority in con- 
gress from almost indignant opposition to 
one of eager complacency, is a triumph of 
statesmanship that has fallen to the lot of 
few men who have occupied the White 
House. 

President Roosevelt had opposed his 
party without breaking with it. He had 
advocated a policy opposed by many lead- 
ers in his party without quarreling with 
them. He won his fight for Cuban reciproc- 
ity and retained the love and esteem of his 
party colleagues. A greater man could not 
have done more. A weaker man would 
have disrupted his party. 

There never was a question as to the suc- 
cess of the Cuban reciprocity measure in 
the senate ; yet the senate was not so prompt 
in its action. The upper house of congress 
has its own traditions and seldom departs 

117 



THE TRIUMPHS OF THE 

from them. It decided to vote on the Cu- 
ban bill on December 16, a week after the 
opening of the regular session, and it re- 
fused to vote before that day. The special 
session, therefore, expired by limitation be- 
fore final action on the Cuban bill was 
taken. 

On December 16, therefore, the senate 
passed the Cuban reciprocity tariff bill by 
a vote of 57 to 18. Of those who voted 
against the bill all were democrats, except 
one, Senator Bard of California. 

President Roosevelt signed the Cuban 
bill on December 17, and on the same day 
issued a proclamation declaring it should 
be in full force and effect on December 27. 
Thus ended the President's struggle with 
his party to gain commercial advantages to 
the new republic— a republic he had risked 
his life on the battlefield to help create. 

Time already has justified the wisdom of 
the President's Cuban policy. Already 
prosperity, shattered by the long contest 
with Spain in the struggle for freedom, is 
beginning to smile upon the island repub- 



ROOSEVELT ADMINISTRATION 

lie. Cuba is gaining daily in trade and in- 
dustry and the United States has not lost 
by the growing commercial advancement of 
the island. 



119 



THE TRIUMPHS OF THE 

CHAPTER VI. 
THE PANAMA CANAL. 

THE victory of the policy of reciproc- 
ity for Cuba had been won on De- 
cember 19, 1903, a month and a day 
after the new republic of Panama had 
signed a treaty granting to the United 
States the right to construct the Panama 
canal, and with the history of that great 
waterway, now in process of construction 
by the United States, always must be asso- 
ciated the name of Theodore Roosevelt. 

There is no purpose here to claim for 
President Roosevelt more credit for the 
completion of the negotiations for the right 
to construct, own and control the great 
interoceanic waterway than he deserves. 
But the history of current events may be 
judged only by their results. A president 
with less courage than Theodore Roosevelt 
would have shrunk from accepting the re- 
sponsibility that he assumed when he seized 
the opportunity presented by a successful 

120 



ROOSEVELT ADMINISTRATION 

revolution of the Isthmian states to secure 
for the United States for all time to come 
the ownership and control of the Panama 
canal. For the clearness of his foresight, 
for his quickness to grasp opportunities 
which come to nations but seldom in a cen- 
tury, and for his courage in facing possi- 
ble but not improbable complications, the 
President was assailed in congress and out 
of it by men whose lives have been spent 
in the service of the republic. He refused 
to falter in the face of that criticism and 
his course was upheld not only by the votes 
of his own party in the senate, but by the 
votes of his party opponents. And not only 
was his policy endorsed, but the predictions 
of war and disaster that were to follow, 
proved to be unwarranted. The United 
States owns the canal zone, is digging the 
canal, and there is no war with the republic 
of Colombia. 

The history of the Panama canal enter- 
prise would fill volumes. It can be given 
here only in its broad outlines. A hurried 
survey of the events connected with so great. 

121 



THE TRIUMPHS OF THE 

an enterprise will be justified, however, be- 
cause the final chapter of that history is the 
record of the greatest triumph of President 
Roosevelt's administration. 

A canal to cut the isthmus of Panama, 
thus connecting the Atlantic and Pacific 
oceans, has been the dream of nations for 
centuries. The earliest explorers of the 
American continent could not be convinced 
that nature had raised so formidable a bar- 
rier to commerce as that opposed by the 
narrow ledge of morass and mountains that 
connected the North and South American 
continents. 

Yasco Munez de Balbao, governor of 
Darien, in 1513, plunged into the interior 
of what he believed to be a continent. He 
crossed a narrow range of mountains and 
found— not the land of river and plain that 
he expected— but the Pacific ocean. He re- 
fused to believe that so narrow a strip of 
land could di\^de two such mighty oceans 
and he searched for a visionary channel. 
Por nearly 200 years explorers were de- 
luded with the belief that there was a nat- 

122 




GEORGE B. CORTELYOU. 
Secretary of Commerce and Labor. 



ROOSEVELT ADMINISTRATION 

ural waterway connecting the two oceans, 
and as late as the year ].771 geographers 
sent to search for a rivei' that was believed 
to flow through some hidden pass in the 
mountains from one ocean to the other. 

Meanwhile a land route from the Atlan- 
tic to the Pacific had been surveyed in 1520 
under direction of Philip V., King of 
Spain, the city of Panama having been 
founded three years before. During the 
first century of Spanish rule on the Ameri- 
can continent the growth of the isthmian 
commerce grew so rapidly that the city 
of Panama became one of the world's im- 
portant ports. 

In 1534 the King of Spain ordered a sur- 
vey for an artificial canal — the first definite 
step in an enterprise which the United 
States to-day has undertaken to complete. 
The first step, however, was not favorable 
to the enterprise, Pascual Andagoya, then 
governor of Darien, advancing the objec- 
tion that to sever the isthmus would be to 
question the wisdom of God, who for pur- 
poses of His own, had raised a barrier be- 

123 



THE TRIUMPHS OF THE 

tween the two oceans. King Philip was too 
good a Christian to oppose his views to the 
evident will of the Almighty, and the pro- 
ject as far as he was concerned was aban- 
doned. 

The years grew into decades and de- 
cades swelled into centuries, but no fur- 
ther efforts were made to realize the 
dream of an interoceanic waterway. The 
project was earnestly discussed, however, 
and the more its importance became recog- 
nized the more the stupendous nature of 
the undertaking was realized and modern 
engineering shrank from a task involving 
so gigantic an effort and so great an out- 
lay of money. 

Ferdinand de Lesseps, the French en- 
gineer, completed the Suez canal in 1869 
at a cost of $100,000,000. When he began 
the project he defied the predictions of the 
best engineers of the world. But he com- 
pleted it and cut the distance from Eu- 
rope to India and the Orient in two. 

Flushed wntli the success of the Suez 
canal and with the plaudits of the world 

124 



ROOSEVELT ADMINISTRATION 

ringing in his ears, De Lesseps declared he 
would dig the Panama canal. 

French interest had been directed to the 
Isthmus of Panama in a languid way by- 
Lieut. N. B. Wyse, who had for some years 
been negotiating with Colombia for a 
canal concession. In 1876 he organized in 
Paris the Societe Civile Internationale du 
Canal Interoceanic, and two years later 
obtained a concession from Colombia. 
But Wyse was only a lieutenant in the 
French navy. De Lesseps was a name to 
conjure with. The French people would 
not invest in the shares of the Wyse com- 
pany. They clamored for shares in a De 
Lesseps company. De Lesseps in 1878 or- 
ganized the Compagnie Universelle du 
Canal Interoceanique. Money flowed into 
the coffers in floods. Lieut. Wyse sold his 
concession to the De Lesseps company for 
$2,000,000, and then followed the years 
of hope, disappointment, fraud, incom- 
petency and disaster which followed the 
great French engineer's project of realiz- 
ing the dream of the centuries. 

125 



THE TRIUMPHS OF THE 

De Lesseps planned a tide water canal 
72 feet wide, 291/2 feet deep. He declared 
he could complete it in eight years at a 
cost of $131,600,000. Examinations, sur- 
veys and preliminary work delayed the 
beginning of the actual undertaking until 
1883. For six years the work was prose- 
cuted with spasmodic energy. Each year 
of the six was a tragedy. Incompetency 
and roguery dominated the enterprise 
from the beginning. The French press 
was subsidized to conceal and misrepre- 
sent. The thrifty peasantry of France, 
deceived by the glamour of the enterprise, 
poured the hoardings of years into the 
enterprise, until $500,000,000 had been 
taken and spent. 

The first five years swallowed these 
$500,000,000, and scarcely a beginning 
had been made on the canal. One histo- 
rian in Pearson's Magazine for 1903 de- 
scribed the methods which permitted so 
wasteful an expenditure of funds. He 
writes : 



ROOSEVELT ADMINISTRATION 

''Jungles, swamps and tropical climate 
had to be overcome; fraud and incompe- 
tency clogged the efforts put forward for 
that end. Records of life on the isthmus 
at that period show the lazy workmen lan- 
guidly toiling in the sun a few hours each 
day. Red tape, procrastination, misman- 
agement, were universal. Expensive ma- 
chinery brought from Europe was per- 
mitted to rust in torrential overflows. 
Steam dredges costing thousands of dol- 
lars went to wrack and ruin while wait- 
ing for backward contractors to blast out 
a rocky ledge that prevented their opera- 
tions. Ships loaded with material were 
held in harbor under costly demurrage 
while half their crews died of fever. 
Through somebody 's foolish blunder loco- 
motives of the wrong gauge were brought 
from Belgium and allowed to sink where 
they stood in mud and slime. 

*' Floods demolished in a night the ill- 
constructed work of weeks. The coolie 
laborers died like flies. The contractors 
cheated the negroes. Money which poured 

127 



THE TRIUMPHS OF THE 

into the isthmus in a steady stream from 
France disappeared as if dropped into 
quicksand, so far as tangible results were 
observed. The sum of $5,000,000 was 
spent in the construction of a single to^vn. 
Costly hospitals were put up and expen- 
sive medical stores were allowed to spoil 
before being delivered to the doctors in 
charge." 

This pen picture of the first efforts to 
dig the Panama canal inadequately re- 
veals the causes which led to the collapse 
of the De Lesseps company. In 1889 came 
the crash. Ferdinand de Lesseps and his 
son Charles were declared guilty of swind- 
ling and were sentenced to prison. The 
great engineer of the Suez canal died be- 
fore the prison doors opened to him, his 
name tarnished because he was a victim 
of the men associated with him. 

Thus ended the De Lesseps enterprise. 
His company was dissolved, but almost 
immediately another French company was 
formed, the New Panama Canal Company, 
from which the United States within the 

128 



ROOSEVELT ADMINISTRATION 

last few weeks has received a title to all 
its rights, property and interests in the 
great interoceanic waterway by the pay- 
ment of $40,000,000. 

The engineers sent to the isthmus by 
the New Panama Company estimated the 
value of the De Lesseps company's plant 
and the work already accomplished at 
$90,000,000. They reported that the canal 
could be completed for $180,000,000. On 
December 26, 1890, the new company ob- 
tained a ten years' extension on the canal 
concession. Later Colombia agreed that 
the ten years' concession should extend to 
October 31, 1904, and still again the con- 
cession was extended to October 31, 1910. 

The new Panama Canal Company went 
to work in a business-like way. It pur- 
chased the Panama railroad. It obtained 
powers to operate ships and steamer lines, 
to carry mails, passengers and merchan- 
dise, to construct wharves, warehouses, 
telegraph and telephone lines. It pur- 
chased an immense quantity of material 
and gave every evidence of being backed 
; 129 



THE TRIUMPHS OF THE 

by vigor and ability. But the new com- 
pany failed — not ingloriously, like its pre- 
decessor — but none the less certainly. 

In all these years of misdirected French 
endeavor there was a growing sentiment 
in the United States for an isthmian canal 
to be owned, operated and controlled by 
the United States. At first it was taken 
for granted that Colombia's concessions 
to the French companies had forestalled 
American enterprise on the isthmus. Na- 
turally, therefore, the attention of the peo- 
ple of this country became fixed upon the 
Nicaraguan route. Here the United 
States possessed exclusive rights, secured 
by a treaty signed in 1867. As the public 
demand for an American OAvned canal be- 
came more insistent the Nicaraguan route 
was the more strongly urged — so strongly 
and so persistently, in fact, that in time 
the Nicaraguan route came to be regarded 
as the only practical one available to the 
United States. 

On February 20, 1889, the year which 
marked the inglorious disaster to the De 
Lesseps company, congress passed an act 

180 




JAMES WILSON, 
Secretax-y of Agriculture. 



ROOSEVELT ADMINISTRATION 

incorporating the Maratime Canal Com* 
pany of Nicaragua. That company se- 
cured the necessary concession and began 
work. From the start it became apparent 
that the Maratime Company would not be 
able to finance so great an undertaking. 
Various efforts were made in congress ta 
secure government aid for the company. 
In 1891 John Sherman introduced a bill, 
by the provisions of which the United 
States guaranteed the principal and inter- 
est of $100,000,000 in bonds to be issued 
by the Maratime Company. Congress re- 
fused to pass it. A similar proposal made 
in congress in 1893 by Mr. Frye of Maine 
met a like fate. In 1894 Senator Morgan 
of Alabama introduced a similar bill. It 
failed to appeal to the business judgment 
of congress. 

Then efforts were renewed in behalf of 
private enterprise, along a different line. 
Senator Morgan on June 1, 1896, on 
March 16, 1897, and on May 5, 1898, in- 
troduced bills in congress proposing that 
the United States purchase 700,000 shares 

131 



THE TRIUMPHS OF THE 

of the Maratime Canal Company's stock 
and guarantee the payment of the bonds 
to be issued by that company. Congress 
successively rejected all three of Senator 
Morgan's proposals, but he returned to 
the attack and on June 20, 1898, intro- 
duced a bill providing that the secretary 
of the treasury be empowered to take 
925,000 of the million shares of the canal 
company's stock, and in payment to issue 
treasury warrants to the amount of $115,- 
000,000 to cover the expenditure for canal 
construction. 

There was much of debate and much of 
newspaper discussion, but the efforts to 
induce congress to extend financial aid 
to the extent of $100,000,000 or more to a 
private incorporation failed. The people 
of the United States had not forgotten the 
bonds issued to aid the construction of 
the Pacific railways. It is true, the gov- 
ernment finally was reimbursed, but the 
sentiment of the country was strong 
against repeating the experiment. 

In the meantime the United States had 

132 



ROOSEVELT ADMINISTRATION 

engaged in war with Spain, and the voy- 
age of the Oregon around Cape Horn had 
taught a national lesson. The first popu- 
lar demand upon congress after the sign- 
ing of the treaty of peace was for the 
immediate construction of an isthmian 
canal. Congress could not ignore so in- 
sistent a demand, even had its members 
been so inclined. On December 7, 1899, 
a bill was introduced in the house author- 
izing the President to acquire from Costa 
Rica and Nicaragua the control of the 
territory necessary for the construction 
and defense of a ship canal by way of 
Lake Nicaragua. The limit of expendi- 
ture was fixed at $140,000,000. 

This bill passed the house on May 2, 
1900, by a vote of 224 yeas to 36 nays; 
92 not voting. The measure went to the 
senate, but was delayed there by the 
negotiations incident to the abrogation of 
the Clayton-Bulwer treaty. The abroga- 
tion of this treaty was deemed necessary 
— as indeed it was necessary. It was nego- 
tiated in 1850 and provided for joint de- 

133 



THE TRIUMPHS OF THE 

fense and control of any isthmian canal 
thereafter to be constructed. The people 
of this country were in no mind to assume 
a divided responsibility, and insisted that 
the isthmian canal, when constructed, 
should be owned, controlled and defended 
by the United States alone. A treaty 
modifying the Clayton-Bulwer conven- 
tion was signed by Secretary of State Hay 
and Sir Julian Pauncefote, the British 
ambassador, in 1899. It was rejected by 
the senate at the unmistakable demand of 
the people. A second treaty was nego- 
tiated, and signed on February 5, 1900, in 
which the Clayton-Bulwer treaty was defi- 
nately abrogated as far as its reference to 
the isthmian canal was concerned. The 
abrogation of the compact of 1850 cleared 
away the last diplomatic and political 
obstacle to American o^vnership and con- 
trol of the proposed canal. 

While the diplomatic debris was being 
cleared away, experienced engineers had 
been sent into the field to examine not 
only the Nicaraguan but the Panama route 

1S4 



KOOSEVELT ADMINISTRATION 

as well. Congress had provided the funds 
and President McKinley had named the 
commission. The Isthmian Canal Commis- 
sion held its first meeting at Washington 
in June, 1899. Rear Admiral John G. 
Walker, U. S. N., retired, was elected 
president. The other members of the com- 
mission were Lieut. Col. Ernst, U. S. A., 
Samuel Pasco, George S. Morrison, Lewis 
M. Haupt, civil engineer, Alfred Noble, 
civil engineer. Colonel Peter C. Haines, 
engineer corps of the United States army, 
William H. Burr, civil engineer, and Prof. 
Emery R. Johnston. Lieutenant Com- 
mander Sidney A. Staunton, U. S. N., was 
chosen secretary. 

The commission took up the study of 
the isthmian canal question without de- 
lay. Five committees were appointed to 
investigate the following subjects: The 
Nicaraguan route; the Panama route; 
other possible routes ; the industrial, com- 
mercial and military value of an inter- 
oceanic canal; and rights, privileges and 
franchises. Working parties of trained 

135 



THE TRIUMPHS OF THE 

engineers were sent over the Xicaraguan^ 
Panama and Darien routes. A committee 
went to Europe to study the Kiel, the 
North Sea and Manchester ship canals. 

The several committees and the field 
engineering parties completed their al- 
loted tasks with as much expedition as 
the importance of the great question per- 
mitted. A preliminary report was sub- 
mitted to congress recommending the 
Nicaraguan route as being the most prac- 
ticable and feasible one for an isthmian 
canal under the control of the United 
States. The cost was estimated, in round 
numbers, at $189,000,000. The commis- 
sion, as subsequent developments proved, 
really favored the Panama route ; but the 
French company, while acknowledging its 
own inability to complete the Panama 
canal, refused to surrender its valuable 
concession to the United States for less 
than $109,000,000. The Walker commis- 
sion, after careful surveys and estimates, 
declared the French company's rights 
were worth ^-lOjOOOjOOO, and no more. 

136 



ROOSEVELT ADMINISTRATION 

Congress responded to the demands of 
the country at once. President Roosevelt, 
in his first message, urged congress to take 
prompt action, but he recommended 
neither the Nicaraguan nor the Panama 
route. On January 7, Congressman Hep- 
burn introduced in the house a bill direct- 
ing the President to construct the Nicara- 
guan canal and appropriating not to ex- 
ceed $180,000,000 for the work. This bill 
was debated two days and passed on Janu- 
ary 9, by a vote of 308 yeas to 2 nays. 

The passage of the Hepburn bill on 
January 9, 1902, brought the French com- 
pany to terms instanter. On the same 
day President Bo, of the French company, 
cabled from Paris that it would accept 
$40,000,000 for all its property and con- 
cessions in Panama. Two days later 
President Bo repeated his cablegram, and 
again on January 14 he cabled that he 
had mailed a proposal to accept the $40,- 
000,000. 

' The frantic eagerness of the French 
company to get out of Panama had been 

137 



v.^-^- 



C 



THE TRIUMPHS OF THE 

foreseen by the Walker Commission, and 
on it promptly presented a final report 
recommending the Panama route. The 
commission's reasons for favoring the Pan- 
ama route were clear, logical and convinc- 
ing. It was sho-vvn that the Nicaragua 
canal would cost $189,864,062, and the 
Panama canal $184,333,258. The Nicara- 
gua canal would be 184 miles long, the 
Panama, 49 miles. It would require ves- 
sels 33 hours to pass through the Nicara- 
gua canal and only 12 hours to traverse 
the one at Panama. 

The Hepburn bill directing the construc- 
tion of the Nicaragua canal already had 
passed the house. It was amended in the 
senate after a lengthy and earnest de- 
bate. The champions of the Nicaragua 
route did not surrender without a strug- 
gle; but finally they were compelled to 
yield to a compromise. On June 19 the 
senate's substitute for the Hepburn bill 
was passed by a vote of 67 yeas to 6 nays. 
The house, after some difficulty, accepted 
the senate bill. It directed the President 

138 



KOOSEVELT ADMINISTRATION 

to construct a ship canal from the Carib- 
bean sea to the Pacific ocean, and pro- 
vided funds not to exceed $180,000,000 
for the purpose. He was authorized to 
pay the French company $40,000,000 for 
all its property, rights and concessions, 
and to complete the Panama canal, pro- 
viding he secure a good title and obtain 
by treaty with the United States of Co- 
lombia complete and perpetual control of 
the canal zone across the isthmus. If he 
could not secure such a title from the 
French company, and such perpetual con- 
trol from the United States of Colombia 
within a reasonable time, he was to pro- 
ceed with the construction of the Nicara- 
gua canal. 

The reader will scan the pages of Ameri- 
can history in vain for an incident in 
which congress imposed a greater trust 
in a President. Congress, in effect, said 
to President Roosevelt: ''Here is $180,- 
000,000. Take it and build a ship canal. 
Select your own route.'' History has re- 
corded few instances in which a ruler has 

139 



THE TRIUMPHS OF THE 

been given so great a mandate. And yet 
congress with scarcely a dissenting vote 
placed this responsibility in the hands of 
Theodore Roosevelt. The United States 
senate is regarded by civilized govern- 
ments the Avorld around as the most con- 
servative deliberative body in the world. 
From the date of the foundation of the 
republic the senate never has been ac- 
cused of arriving rashly or hastily at an 
immature judgment. And yet in the sen- 
ate there were only two men who voted 
against the proposal to place in Theodore 
Roosevelt's hands the tremendous respon- 
sibility of selecting an isthmian canal 
rout^, of choosing the men to direct the 
construction of the waterway, and of ex- 
pending so enormous a sum. And these 
two men voted no, not because of any 
lack of confidence in the judgment of 
Theodore Roosevelt, but because they had 
been the earnest and sincere champions of 
a particular canal and they could not 
bring themselves to the point of surren- 
dering convictions that had been attained 

140 



ROOSEVELT ADMINISTRATION 

by many years of careful study of the 
greatest engineering problem that had se- 
riously been proposed in many centuries. 
The responsibility of selecting a route 
for the isthmian canal was not of Theo- 
dore Roosevelt's seeking. But when it 
was placed upon his shoulders he accepted 
its burden with the calm confidence of a 
man sure of himself. Subsequent develop- 
ments in the history of the canal enter- 
prise have revealed not one false step, 
not one mistake. Recent events on the 
isthmus of Panama compelled President 
Roosevelt to negotiate new treaties. He 
was criticised at the time; but the criti- 
cism came only from one man who had 
persistently championed the Nicaragua 
route and who would not give up, and 
from a man who, under the enormous 
stress of a pending national campaign, 
sought to create a new political issue. 
Neither of these men were upheld by 
their own party colleagues. For a second 
time the senate by a non-partisan vote de- 
clared that President Roosevelt was right. 

141 



THE TRIUMPHS OF THE 

There were two phases to the negotia- 
tions which resulted finally in the accept- 
ance of the Panama route for the isthmian 
canal. Congress passed the canal bill with 
what is known as the Spooner amendment 
on June 19, 1902. President Roosevelt 
lost no time in beginning negotiations 
with Colombia for a treaty which would 
secure to the United States the perpetual 
control of the strip of territory through 
which the proposed canal must pass. 
There were delicate subjects to handle, 
for while Colombia apparently was eager 
to have the United States construct the 
canal, there was a natural aversion on the 
part of the government of the South 
American republic to surrender sover- 
eignty over the canal zone. This diffi- 
culty, however, was surmounted, and on 
January 22, 1903, a formal treaty was 
signed by Secretary Hay for the United 
States and Dr. Ilerren, the charge d 'af- 
fairs of the Colombian legation. This 
treaty was ratified by the United States 
senate on March 17, and immediately 

143 



ROOSEVELT ADMINISTRATION 

transmitted to Bogota. By the terms of 
the treaty Colombia leased the canal strip 
to the United States for the period of one 
hundred years in consideration of the pay- 
ment of $10,000,000 down and an annual 
rental. The United States was given the 
right to fortify the canal and to maintain 
a force of military police along its entire 
length. This was necessary to ensure the 
safety of the canal in time of foreign war 
or civil strife. 

President Marroquin summoned the 
Colombian congress to meet at Bogota on 
July 24, 1903, for the purpose of ratifying 
the canal treaty. On August 17 the Co- 
lombian senate rejected the convention. 
The forces which worked to secure the 
defeat of the treaty have never been fully 
revealed; but there is evidence that a 
strong cabal in Colombia believed, or af- 
fected to believe, that by rejecting the 
treaty and negotiating a new one a sum 
larger than $10,000,000 could be secured 
from the United States. 

143 



THE TRIUMPHS OF THE 

Colombia's refusal to ratify the canal 
treaty led to startling but not unexpected 
events. The congress at Bogota ad- 
journed on October 30, 1903, and on Xo- 
Yember 3, four days later, the state of 
Panama seceded from the United States 
of Colombia. The secession of Panama 
had been foreseen in this country. It was 
known for montlis that the people of Pan- 
ama, whose future welfare and prosperity 
were dependent upon the construction of 
the canal, would sever their allegiance 
from a republic so indifferent to their in- 
terests. Many weeks before the formal 
■act of secession cabled dispatches to news- 
papers in the United States told of the 
active preparations for revolt, of the col- 
lection of arms, of the plans of the lead- 
ers. 

The secession took place without a clash 
of arms. It was precipitated by the ar- 
rival at Colon of 500 Colombian soldiers, 
sent by the Bogota government to prevent 
it. The independence of the isthmian re- 
public was proclaimed at Panama on the 

144 



HOOSEVELT ADMINISTRATION 

evening of November 3. The people were 
practically unanimous for separation, and 
the revolt was immediately successful. At 
Colon the situation was threatening for a 
few hours because of the presence of 500 
Colombian troops, who sought to seize 
the Panama railroad, cross the isthmus 
and attack the forces of the newly pro- 
claimed republic. Such a procedure, with- 
out doubt would have led to a bitter 
struggle along the line of the railroad, to 
the indefinite demoralization of traffic. 
This the United States, under its treaty 
obligations, was bound to prevent. A force 
of marines, forty in number, were landed 
at Colon from the gunboat Nashville, and 
these forty men were formidable enough 
to hold the 500 Colombian soldiers in check 
and to prevent them from carrying out 
their threatened seizure of the Panama 
railway. 

President Roosevelt immediately took 
steps looking to the formal recognition of 
the new republic. On November 6 the 
state department was notified that a pro- 

145 



THE TRIUMPHS OF THE 

visional government had been formed at 
Panama. On November 7 'M. Biinau- 
Varilla was appointed minister from Pan- 
ama to the United States, and on Novem- 
ber 13 he was formally received as the 
duly accredited envoy of a sovereign and 
independent state. This amounted to an 
official recognition of the existence of 
the new republic, and Great Britain, 
France, Germany, Russia and other for- 
eign powers followed the example set by 
the United States within a few weeks. 

Colombia protested vigorous!}^ and 
threatened to invade Panama. For a few 
weeks the attitude of the South American 
republic was so menacing that the navy 
department decided, as a precautionary 
measure, to send a force of marines — 1,500 
men in all — to protect the Panama rail- 
road and to guard American interests 
on the isthmus. Nothing, however, came 
of Colombia's bellicose threats. Gen. 
Rafael Reyes visited the United States in 
hopes of averting action friendly to Pan- 
ama, but his mission came to naught. 

146 



ROOSEVELT ADMINISTRATION 

On November 18, 1903, a treaty was 
signed at Washington, by which Panama 
granted to the United States in perpetuity 
the use, occupation and control of the 
canal zone. In return the United States 
guaranteed to maintain the independence 
of the republic of Panama and agreed to 
pay the new republic $10,000,000 in hand 
and $250,000 annually. The treaty was 
ratified at Panama on December 2 and 
laid before the senate at Washington early 
in the session. 

The canal treaty provoked a violent out- 
cry from a few men in the senate and 
from a few politicians who imagined for 
the moment that it might be made to serve 
as a political issue. President Roosevelt, 
however, was upheld by an overwhelm- 
ing majority of the people, without re- 
gard to politics. His few opponents de- 
nounced him as having participated in 
the spoliation of a republic with whom 
the United States had always maintained 
the most friendly relations. The Presi- 
dent was accused of distorting a treaty 

147 



THE TRIUMPHS OF THE 

■with a friendly republic and thus making 
it an aid to secession. The President's 
assailants declared that he should have 
construed the treaty of 1846 as requiring 
him to uphold the sovereignty of the re- 
public of Colombia in Panama, and that 
therefore he should have used the armed 
force of the United States — not to pre- 
serve peace and order on the isthmus and 
to maintain railroad traffic — but to pre- 
vent the secession of the state of Panama 
and to assist Colombia to regain control 
over a people who had with scarcely a 
dissenting voice proclaimed their inde- 
pendence. 

The clamor of the few partisan oppon- 
ents of the President attracted only pass- 
ing notice. A calm analysis of the noisy 
vehemence of a few senators proved that 
even the President's opponents had no 
alternative course to suggest. The people 
were quick to see that the President had 
taken advantage of natural events to se- 
cure rights for which the United States 

148 



*) 



ROOSEVELT ADMINISTRATION 

had been hopelessly negotiating for dec- 
ades. 

President Roosevelt, unswerved by the 
personal attacks made upon him by the 
friends of the Nicaragiian canal, or by the 
handful of democratic senators who 
sought to inflame the public mind against 
him, boldly appealed to the people for 
justification of his course. His message 
to congress on the subject of the isthmian 
canal will appear in future histories as 
one of the greatest state papers ever 
written. It was masterly in its presenta- 
tion of the reasons which had actuated 
the President. It was not a defense. It 
was unanswerable. It left his detractors 
without a peg upon which to hang an 
argument. 

Inasmuch as this message, read to both 
houses of congress on December 7, 1903, 
covered every feature of the controversy 
with the United States of Colombia, it will 
be reproduced here with only such 
abridgement as the exigencies of space de- 

149 



THE TRIUMPHS OF THE 

mand. The President introduced the sub- 
ject by saying : 

''By the act of June 28, 1902, the con- 
gress authorized the President to enter 
into treaty with Colombia for the building 
of the canal across the isthmus of Pan- 
ama; it being provided that in the event 
of failure to secure such treaty after the 
lapse of a reasonable time recourse should 
be had to building a canal through Nicara- 
gua. It has not been necessary to con- 
sider this alternative, as I am enabled to 
lay before the senate a treaty providing 
for the building of the canal across the 
Isthmus of Panama. This was the route 
which commended itself to the deliberate 
judgment of the congress, and we can 
now acquire by treaty the right to con- 
struct the canal over this route. The 
question now, therefore, is not by which 
route the isthmian canal shall bo built, 
for that question has been definitely and 
irrevocably decided. The question is sim- 
ply, whether or not we shall have an isth- 
mian canal.*' 

150 



ROOSEVELT ADMINISTRATION 

President Roosevelt then reviewed in 
detail the relations between the United 
States and Colombia as affected by the 
treaty of 1846 and passed on to a history 
of the negotiation of the canal treaty, 
saying : 

"This treaty was entered into at the 
earnest solicitation of the people of Colom- 
bia and after a body of experts appointed 
by our government especially to go into 
the matter of the routes across the isthmus 
had pronounced unanimously in favor of 
the Panama route. 

''In drawing up the treaty, every con- 
cession was made to the people and to 
the government of Colombia. We were 
more than just in dealing with them. Our 
generosity was such as to make it a se- 
rious question whether we had not gone 
too far in their interests at the expense of 
our own, for in our scrupulous desire to 
pay all possible heed not merely to the 
real but even to the fancied rights of 
our weaker neighbor, who already owed 
so much to our protection and forbear- 

151 



THE TRIUMPHS OF THE 

ance, we yielded in all possible ways to 
her desires in dra^ying up the treaty. 

*' Nevertheless the government of Co- 
lombia not merely repudiated the treaty, 
but repudiated it in such manner as to 
make it evident by the time the Colom- 
bian congress adjourned that not the scan- 
tiest hope remained of ever getting a satis- 
factory treaty from them. The govern- 
ment of Colombia made the treaty, and 
yet when the Colombian congress was 
called to ratify it the vote against ratifi- 
cation was unanimous. It does not ap- 
pear that the government made any real 
effort to secure ratification. ' ' 

Passing to the revolt on the isthmus 
and the recognition of the new republic 
of Panama, President Roosevelt said : 

* 'Immediately after the adjournment of 
the Colombian congress a revolution broke 
out in Panama. The people of Panama 
had long been discontented with the re- 
public of Colombia, and they had been 
kept quiet only by the prospect of the 
conclusion of the treaty, which was to 

153 



ROOSEVELT ADMINISTRATION 

tliem a matter of vital concern. When it 
became evident that the treaty was hope- 
lessly lost the people of Panama rose liter» 
ally as one man. Not a shot was fired on 
the isthmus in the interests of the Colom- 
bian government. Not a life was lost in 
the accomplishment of the revolution. 
The Colombian troops stationed on the 
isthmus, who had long been unpaid, made 
common cause with the people of Panama^ 
and with astonishing unanimity the new 
republic was started. 

*'The duty of the United States in the 
premises was clear. In strict accordance 
with the principles laid down by Secre- 
taries Cass and Seward, the United States 
gave notice that it would permit the land- 
ing of no expeditionary force the arrival 
of which would mean chaos and destruc- 
tion along the line of the railroad and of 
the proposed canal, and an interruption 
of transit as an inevitable consequence.'* 

Continuing, President Roosevelt re- 
viewed the history of the isthmus since 
1846, showing that scarcely a year had. 

153 



THE TRIUMPHS OF THE 

not witnessed an attempted revolution. 
He gave dates and details of fifty-three 
revolutions, rebellions, insurrections and 
riots that occurred within a period of 
fifty-seven years. The record of turbu- 
lence and the strife of almost continuous 
civil war President Roosevelt declared 
proved that Colombia had been utterly 
incapable of keeping order on the isthmus. 
He continued: 

^'The above recital of facts establishes 
beyond c[uestion, first, that the United 
States has for over half a century patient- 
ly and in good faith carried out its obli- 
gations under the treaty of 18-46 ; second, 
that when for the first time it became pos- 
sible for Colombia to do anything in re- 
quital for the services thus repeatedly 
rendered to it for fifty-seven years by the 
United States, the Colombian government 
peremptorily and offensively refused thus 
to do its part, even though to do so would 
have been to its advantage and immeas- 
urably to the advantage of the state of 
Panama ; third, that throughout this pe- 

154 



ROOSEVELT ADMINISTRATION 

riod revolutions, riots and factional dis- 
turbances, instead of showing any sign 
of abating, have tended to grow more 
numerous and more serious in the imme- 
diate past; fourth, that the control of 
Colombia over the isthmus of Panama 
could not be maintained without the 
armed intervention and assistance of the 
United States. In other words, the gov- 
ernment of Colombia, though wholly un- 
able to maintain order on the isthmus, 
has nevertheless declined to ratify a 
treaty, the conclusion of which opened the 
only chance to secure its own stability and 
to guarantee permanent peace on and the 
construction of a canal across the isthmus. 
''Under such circumstances," said the 
President, in conclusion, *Hhe government 
of the United States would have been 
guilty of folly and weakness amounting 
in their sum to a crime against the nation 
had it acted otherwise than it did when 
the revolution of November 3 last took 
place in Panama. 

155 



THE TRIUMPHS OF THE 

^'This great enterprise of building the 
interoceanic canal cannot be held up to 
gratify the whims, or out of respect to 
governmental impotence, or to the even 
more sinister and evil political peculiari- 
ties of a people who, though they dwell 
afar off, yet against the wish of the actual 
dwellers on the isthmus, assert an unreal 
supremacy over that territory. 

''The possession of a territory fraught 
with such peculiar capacities as the 
isthmus in question carries with it obliga- 
tions to mankind. The course of events 
has shown that the canal cannot be built 
by private enterprise or by any other na- 
tion than our own. Hence it must be built 
by the United States. 

''Every effort has been made by the 
government of the United States to per- 
suade Colombia to follow a course which 
was essentially not only to our own inter- 
est and to the interest of the world, but 
to the interests of Colombia itself. These 
efforts have failed, and Colombia, by her 
persistence in repulsing the advances that 

156 



ROOSEVELT ADMINISTRATION 

have been made, has forced us, for the 
sake of our own honor and of the inter- 
ests and well being, not merely of our 
own people, but of the people of the 
isthmus of Panama, and the people of the 
civilized countries of the world, to take 
decisive steps to bring to an end a condi- 
tion of affairs which had become intoler- 
able." 

President Roosevelt's message ended 
the controversy. The senate debated the- 
Panama treaty with its usual delibera- 
tion, but its ratification was certain from 
the beginning. An attempt was made to- 
organize an opposition among the demo- 
cratic senators, but it failed. The treaty 
was ratified on February 23, 1904, by a. 
vote of 66 to 14. President Roosevelt; 
appointed the canal commission on Feb- 
ruary 29, as follows: Rear Admiral 
John G. Walker, U. S. N., retired; Maj.- 
Gen. George W. Davis, U. S. A., retired,. 
District of Columbia; William H. Burr, 
New York; Benjamin M. Harrod, Louis- 
iana; Carl Ewald Grunsky, California;. 

157 



THE TRIUMPHS OF THE 

Frank J. Ilecker, Michigan; W. B. Par- 
sons, New York. 

All legal steps to convey the title of the 
French company to the United States have 
"been completed inParis and the canal com- 
mission already has made its first official 
inspection of the canal route. The Ameri- 
can flag is flying over the canal zone and 
already work has begun on the waterway 
which is to sever two continents, and link 
two oceans, forever to be open to the 
commerce of the world, under the protec- 
tion of the United States. 



158 



ROOSEVELT ADMINISTRATION 

CHAPTER VII. 
THE MERGER DECISION. 

THE decision of the United States 
supreme court, sustaining President 
Roosevelt's legal battle in defense 
of the rights of the common people, and 
to prevent the consolidation of great rail- 
way systems, came within a few months 
after his triumph in securing reciprocity 
for Cuba and in insuring the immediate 
construction of the Panama canal. 

The United States supreme court, in a 
decision announced on March 14, 1904, 
declared that the control of the Northern 
Pacific and Great Northern railways by 
the Northern Securities Company was an 
ingenious plan to consolidate two parallel 
and competing lines of railroad by the 
device of a holding company, and that 
therefore it was a violation of the federal 
law, because it was a combination in re- 
straint of trade. 

159 



THE TRIUMPHS OF THE 

The decision of the supreme court was 
a remarkable tribute to President Roose- 
velt. It was the President that directed 
the attorney general to bring the suit 
against the Northern Securities Company. 
It was the President who urged the enact- 
ment of the law by congress which 
enabled, or required, the federal courts 
to expedite the suits. No other President 
'ever attacked so boldly and so vigorously 
so great an aggregation of capitalized in- 
terests. 

President Roosevelt is not an enemy of 
capital. He is not a rampant ''trust bus- 
ter." But in the formation of the North- 
ern Securities Company he saw, more 
quickly than any one else, a menace to 
the business interests of the country. If 
the Northern Securities Company could 
by a bold subterfuge control two or three 
great transcontinental lines of railroad, 
^ "Western Securities Company" could 
consolidate the remaining lines to the Pa- 
cific — ail ''Eastern Securities Company" 
could unite the great Atlantic seaboard 

160 



ROOSEVELT ADMINISTRATION 

lines — a ^'Southern Securities Company '* 
could control the great lines leading to 
the gulf — and finally all these ''security 
companies" might themselves be united 
into a ''United States Securities Com- 
pany ' ' and thus in time every line of rail- 
road might have been brought under the 
control of a single syndicate of men. The 
possibilities of injury to the commercial 
interests of the United States were unlim- 
ited. All competition would have been 
throttled. Some interests would have been 
favored at the expense of others. Such a 
syndicate — and it was contemplated — 
would have dictated the price the farmer 
should receive for his grain, the price the 
mill owner should receive for his product, 
the price the mine operator should receive 
for his coal and iron. From dictating 
prices to the great mining and manufac- 
turing industries of the country to actu- 
ally owning them would have been an 
easy step for a holding company that had 
absolute control of the transportation in- 
terests of the United States. 

161 



THE TRIUMPHS OF THE 

The formation of the Northern Securi- 
ties Company was the boldest attack ever 
made by consolidated capital upon the 
real business interests of the country. 
President Roosevelt attacked it — not be- 
cause it was a combination of capital, 
merely, but because it was a menace to 
the farmer, the business man, the small 
manufacturer. 

The Northern Securities Company was 
incorporated, under the laws of the state 
of New Jersey, on November 13, 1901, a 
few weeks after Theodore Roosevelt had 
taken up the unfinished administration of 
President McKinley. It was capitalized 
to the enormous amount of $400,000,000. 
Only one company ever incorporated — 
the United States Steel Corporation — had 
a larger capital stock. The company was 
organized through the efforts of James 
J. Hill, president of the Great Northern 
Railroad Company, for the purpose of 
taking over and holding the stocks of the 
Northern Pacific and the Great Northern 
railways. The formation of the company 

162 



ROOSEVELT ADMINISTRATION 

gave one set of men control of the two 
great transcontinental systems of the 
northwest, reaching from Chicago and St. 
Paul to Puget sound, on the Pacific ocean. 

President Roosevelt saw at once that 
the Northern Securities Company was an 
organization in restraint of trade, and by 
his direction the attorney general brought 
suit in the United States circuit court at 
St. Paul, under the Sherman anti-trust act 
of 1890. 

The President's attitude toward the 
capitalized interests of the country had 
been clearly defined in the first message he 
sent to congress, on December 3 — less 
than a month after James J. Hill, J. Pier- 
pont Morgan, E. H. Harriman and others 
powerful in the financial world, had defied 
the law by organizing the Northern Se- 
curities Company. In that message the 
President said : 

^'The tremendous and highly complex 
industrial development which went on 
with ever accelerated rapidity during the 
latter half of the nineteenth century 

163 



THE TRIUMPHS OF THE 

brings us face to face, at the beginning 
of the twentieth, with very serious social 
problems. The old laws and the old cus- 
toms which had almost the binding force 
of law were once quite sufficient to regu- 
late the accumulation of wealth. Since 
the industrial changes which so enormous- 
ly have increased the productive power 
of mankind, they are no longer sufficient. 

''The growth of cities has gone on be- 
yond comparison faster than the gro^rth 
of the country, and the upbuilding of the 
great industrial centers has meant a start- 
ling increase, not merely in the aggregate 
of wealth, but in the number of very large 
individual, and especially of very large 
corporate, fortunes. The creation of 
these great corporate fortunes has not 
been due to the tariff nor to any other 
governmental action, but to natural 
causes in the business world, operating in 
other countries a.s they operate in our 
own. 

''The process has aroused much antag- 
onism, a great part of which is wholly 

1&4 



ROOSEVELT ADMINISTRATION 

without warrant. It is not true that as 
the rich have grown richer the poor have 
grown poorer. On the contrary, never be- 
fore has the average man, the wage work- 
er, the farmer, the small trader, been so 
well off as in this country and at the pres- 
ent time. 

^' There have been abuses connected with 
the accumulation of wealth; yet it re- 
mains true that a fortune accumulated in 
legitimate business can be accumulated 
by the person specially benefited only on 
condition of conferring immense inciden- 
tal benefits upon others. Successful en- 
terprise, of the type which benefits all 
mankind, can only exist if the conditions 
are such as to offer great prizes as the re- 
wards of success. 

''The captains of industry, who have 
driven the railway systems across this 
continent, who have built up our com- 
merce, who have developed our manufac- 
tures, have, on the whole, done great good 
to our people. "Without them the material 

165 



THE TRIUMPHS OF THE 

development of which we are so justly 
proud could never have taken place." 

President Roosevelt then pointed out 
the necessity for caution in dealing with 
the corporations. He boldly declared 
that ''for the government to undertake 
by crude and ill-considered legislation, to 
do what may turn out to be bad, would 
be to incur the risk of such far-reaching 
national disaster that it would be prefer- 
able to undertake nothing at all." He 
then presented the other side of the ques- 
tion, saying: 

"Yet it is also true that there are real 
and grave evils, one of the chief being 
overcapitalization, because of its many 
baleful consequences; and a resolute and 
practical effort must be made to correct 
these evils. 

"It is no limitation of property rights 
or freedom of contract to require that 
when men receive from the government 
the privilege of doing business under cor- 
porate form, w^hich frees them from indi- 
vidual responsibility, and enables them 

166 



ROOSEVELT ADMINISTRATION 

to call into tlieir enterprise the capital 
of the public, they shall do so upon abso- 
lutely truthful representations as to the 
value of the property in which the capital 
is to be invested. 

''Corporations engaged in interstate 
commerce should be regulated, if they are 
found to exercise a license working to 
the public injury. It should be as much 
the aim of those who seek for social bet- 
terment to rid the business world of 
crimes of cunning as to rid the entire body 
politic of crimes of violence. Great cor- 
porations exist only because they are 
created and safeguarded by our institu- 
tions ; and it is, therefore, our duty to see 
that they work in harmony with these in- 
stitutions." 

Turning to the remedies for existing 
evils, President Roosevelt advocated no 
radical ''trust smashing" policy. He did 
not seek to inflame the public mind 
against wealth. He was conservative 
without being overcautious. He gave the 
impression of a man who proposed that 

167 



THE TRIUMPHS OF THE 

the government should do its duty toward 
the whole people, but that no false start 
should be made. He continued : 

''The first essential in determining how 
to deal with the great industrial combina- 
tions is knowledge of the facts — publicly. 
In the interests of the public, the govern- 
ment should have the right to inspect and 
examine the workings of the great cor- 
porations engaged in interstate busi- 
ness. Publicity is the only sure remedy 
which we can now invoke. Wliat further 
remedies are needed in the way of gov- 
ernmental regulation, or taxation, can 
only be determined after publicity has 
been obtained, by process of law, and in 
the course of administration. The first 
requisite is knowledge, full and complete 
— knowledge w^hich may be made public 
to all the world. 

''The nation should without interfering 
with the power of the states in the matter 
itself, also assume power of supervision 
of and regulation over all corporations 
doing an interstate business. This is es- 

168 



ROOSEVELT ADMINISTRATION 

pecially true where the corporation de- 
rives a portion of its wealth from the 
existence of some monopolistic element 
or tendency in its business. 

''There would be no hardship in such 
supervision; banks are subject to it and 
in their case it is now accepted as a sim- 
ple matter of course. Indeed, it is prob- 
able that supervision of corporations by 
the national government need not go so- 
far as is now the case with the supervision 
exercised over them by so conservative a 
state as Massachusetts, in order to pro- 
duce excellent results. 

''I believe that a law can be framed 
which will enable the national government 
to exercise control along the lines above 
indicated, profiting by the experience 
gained through the passage and adminis- 
tration of the interstate commerce act. 
If, however, the judgment of congress is 
that it lacks the constitutional power to 
pass such an act, then a constitutional 
amendment should be submitted to confer 
the power." 

169 



THE TRIUMPHS OF THE 

Holding to the principles enumerated in 
his first message to congress, President 
Roosevelt could not permit the Northern 
Securities Company to carry out its pro- 
ject of consolidating two such great com- 
peting and parallel lines of railroad as 
the Northern Pacific and the Great North- 
em "without making an effort to prevent 
it. Such a consolidation, he believed, was 
in violation of the Sherman anti-trust law 
passed by a republican congress in 1890 
and signed by a republican president, 
Benjamin Harrison, on July 2, of that 
year. 

Up to the formation of the Northern Se- 
curities Company the great railway inter- 
ests had tacitly accepted the Sherman act, 
because as yet no method had been de- 
vised for successfully evading it. But the 
device of a holding company, to own the 
stock of two separate and competing lines, 
and to exercise full control over both 
while permitting each to retain its indi- 
vidual entity, finally suggested itself. The 

170 




CHARLES DICK. 

Senator from Oliio. 



ROOSEVELT ADMINISTRATION 

Northern Securities Company was the re- 
sult. 

The attorney general of Minnesota at- 
tacked the merger company in the state 
courts and simultaneously President 
Roosevelt directed the attorney general to 
bring suit in the federal courts in behalf of 
the United States government. The govern- 
ment's suit was filed in the United States 
circuit court at St. Paul, Minn., on March 
11, 1902. Necessarily the hearing of a 
case involving $400,000,000 consumed no 
little time and the end of the year 1902 
was reached with the end of the suit not 
in sight. Then, too, the prospect of an 
indefinite postponement of a final decision 
in the supreme court of the United States 
presented itself. Under the laws of pro- 
cedure, the case was certain to go to the 
United States court of appeals and from 
that tribunal to the supreme court of the 
United States, as it could only be pre- 
sumed that the Securities Company would 
not accept the decree of a lower court as 
final. Between the circuit court to the 

171 



THE TRIUMPHS OF THE 

United States supreme court a delay of 
from four to six years was inevitable. 
Such a stay meant injury to the business 
interests of the country. The exigencies 
of a difficult situation presented itself to 
the chief executive and with his charac- 
teristic manner of going directly at a diffi- 
cult problem he met the difficulty boldly 
and without hesitation. 

President Roosevelt called a conference 
of republican leaders at the White House 
early in January, 1903. He outlined his 
plan for attacking the Northern Securities 
Company and asked for legislation to ex- 
pedite the suits. Under the prevailing 
practice of the courts a decision in the 
United States supreme court could not be 
reached under several years. As a result 
of that conference a bill designed to ex- 
pedite anti-trust legislation was intro- 
duced in congress. It passed the senate 
on February 4, 1903, and the house on 
the following day. President Roosevelt 
signed it on February 11. 

173 



ROOSEVELT ADMINISTRATION , 

Briefly, the law provides that any suit 
brought by the attorney general of the 
United States under the Sherman act shall 
be given precedence over all other cases 
in the circuit courts and be assigned for 
hearing at the earliest practicable date, 
before not less than three circuit judges. 
Any appeal from the decision of the cir- 
cuit judges must go direct to the United 
States supreme court. 

President Roosevelt did more than to 
ask for and secure the law expediting 
anti-trust litigation, but he asked for 
funds. Congress, already imbued with 
confidence in the executive, placed half a 
million dollars in his hands for the prose- 
cution of cases under the Sherman act. 
This fund was to be used for the employ- 
ment of special counsel and agents. The 
amount was provided for in the legisla- 
tive, executive and judicial appropriation 
bill approved on February 26, 1903. 

Four judges of the circuit court — name- 
ly, A. M. Thayer, H. C. Caldwell, Walter 
H. Sanborn and Willis Vandevanter — 

173 



THE TRir^MPHS OF THE 

heard the government's ease against the 
Northern Securities Company. The gov- 
ernment's case was ably presented on 
both sides, and the arguments of the op- 
posing counsel were elaborate. 

On April 9, 1903, the four judges who 
had heard the case, by unanimous agree- 
ment, decided that the Northern Securi- 
ties Company was an illegal combination 
within the meaning of the Sherman act. 
A decree was entered adjudging that the 
stock of the Northern Pacific and Great 
Northern companies was acquired by the 
Northern Securities Company by virtue of 
a combination in restraint of trade and 
commerce among the several states, such 
as the Sherman anti-trust act of 1890 de- 
nounces as illegal. The decree further 
directed the dissolution of the Northern 
Securities Company and the return to the 
stockholders of the Northern Pacific and 
Great Northern the shares they had given 
in return for Northern Securities stock. 

The decision of the four circuit judges 
left the Northern Securities Company but 

17} 



ROOSEVELT ADMINISTRATION 

little ground to stand upon. The court, 
after reciting the facts of the merger, 
declared : 

''The scheme which was thus devised 
and consummated led inevitably to the 
following results: 

''First, it placed the control of the two 
roads in the hands of a single person — 
to-wit, the Securities Company — by virtue 
of the ownership of a large majority of 
the stock of both companies. 

*' Second, it destroyed every motive for 
competition between two roads engaged 
in interstate traffic, which were natural 
competitors for business, by pooling the 
earnings of the two roads for the common 
benefit of the stockholders of both com- 
panies." 

The four judges were in full accord in 
the findings in law and in fact. The opin- 
ion itself was ^vritten by Judge A. M. 
Thayer. It was a triumphant vindication 
of the Sherman anti-trust act. It estab- 
lished that act firmly as a part of the 
constitutional law of the land. It was a 

175 



THE TRIUMPHS OF THE 

decision that vindicated the statesmanship 
of its distinguished author of the anti- 
trust law, the wisdom of the congress that 
passed it, and the courage of the president 
that used it to attack the greatest com- 
bination of capitalized interests ever 
formed in the United States except one. 

As had been foreseen, the case was ap- 
pealed to the United States supreme court. 
The decision of that tribunal was handed 
down on March 14, 1904 — less than a year 
after the decision of the circuit court and 
only three days more than two years from 
the day that the suit was begun in the 
lower court. The opinion of the supreme 
court sustained the judgment of the lower 
tribunal in every particular. The North- 
ern Securities Company was forced to 
surrender the stock of the Northern Pa- 
cific and the Great Northern Companies 
and those railroads returned to the inde- 
pendent position each had held in the rail- 
way world prior to the formation of the 
holding company. 

176 



ROOSEVELT ADMINISTRATION 

The dissolution of the Northern Securi- 
ties Company, as a result of the vigorous 
assault of President Roosevelt, was accom- 
panied by no shock to the financial world. 
The President had destroyed a combina- 
tion representing $400,000,000 of capital, 
and yet not a dollar of vested interest was 
lost to a single man. The Northern Se- 
curities Company was destroyed, but the 
Northern Pacific and the Great Northern 
railroads remained, their stock as valua- 
ble as it was the day it passed to the con- 
trol of the holding company. 

President Roosevelt proved to the finan- 
cial world that its prosperity did not de- 
pend upon the formation of illegal com- 
binations. He proved to the people that 
he had the courage to right a wrong, even 
though the wrong represented so many 
hundreds of millions of capital. His coura- 
geous course proved that he could be 
trusted by the people and that he need 
not be distrusted as an enemy of lawful 
enterprise. 



ir? 



THE TRIUMPHS OF THE 



CHAPTER VHI. 

AN ARMY SAVED FROM HUMILIA- 
TION. 

THE war with Spain brought glory 
and humiliation to the United 
States — glory won when Dewey 
and the intrepid commanders and men 
under him sailed his fleet over channel 
mines and past the batteries at Corre- 
gidor island, entered the bay of ]\Ian- 
ila, attacked the Spanish fleet and 
destroyed it under the very guns of 
the Cavite forts. Glory there was when 
Leonard "Wood and Theodore Roosevelt 
charged at the head of their rough riders 
into the tangled jimgles at Las Guisimas 
and won a victory from an overwhelming 
force of Spanish troops, in the first land 
fighting on Cuban soil. Glory there was 
when the American soldiers — volunteer 
and regular — swept up the hills of San 
Juan and El Caney and planted the stars 

178 



KOOSEVELT ADMINISTRATION 

and stripes on the crests. Glory there 
was in all the land fighting in Cuba, where 
the men under Shafter and Wheeler, Sum- 
ner, Lawton, Chaffee, Wood and Roose- 
velt marched and fought in dense 
undergrowth of tropical vegetation, over 
blind trails, across streams of un- 
known depths, up hills surmounted by 
hidden blockhouses. Enemy they could 
see none. The smokeless powder from the 
Spanish Mausers gave no sign. The dense 
chaparral hid everything. The Americans 
fought under burning sun and through 
nights of pouring rain. They went hun- 
gry and thirsty. They slept in trenches 
filled with slimy ooze. But they won. 
They proved anew the highest traditions 
of the American soldier. Then, too, glory 
there was when Cervera's fleet made its 
hopeless dash for liberty on that ill-fated 
Sunday morning. 

Humiliation came before the glory was 
won. Humiliation there was in the dis- 
covery that the American army system 
was not equal to so slight an emergency 

179 



THE TRIUMPHS OF THE 

as that which arose when the nation was 
compelled to do battle with so decrepit a 
nation as Spain. The army itself was 
not to blame for the humiliation. The 
fault lay with the men who had permitted 
the army administration to become a 
weakened, unserviceable machine. The 
blame was with congress — not with the 
army. Even so distinguished a member 
of congress as Senator Henry Cabot Lodge 
does not hesitate to place the blame where 
it properly belonged. In his history, ''The 
War with Spain," he reveals our national 
humiliation, saying: 

''The American nav>^ wa3 ready, as 
ships of war must always be, and when 
the President signed the Cuban resolu- 
tions, the fleet started for Cuba without 
a moment's delay. With the army the 
case was widely different. Congress had 
taken care of the army in a spasmodic 
and insufficient manner, consistently do- 
ing nothing for it except to multiply civil- 
ian clerks and officials of all kinds, who 
justified their existence by a diligent 

180 



EOOSEVELT ADMINISTRATION 

weaving of red tape and by magnifying 
details of work until all the realities of 
the service were thoroughly obscured. 

''Thus we had a cumbrous, top-heavy 
system of administration, rusted and slow 
moving, and accustomed to care for an 
army of 25,000 men. An army of 200,000 
volunteers and 60,000 regulars was sud- 
denly demanded, and the poor old system 
of military administration, with its coils 
of red tape and its vast clerical force 
devoted to details, began to groan and 
creak, to break down here and to stop 
there, and to produce a vast crop of de- 
lays, blunders, and what was far worse, 
of needless suffering, disease and death, 
to the brave men in the field. 

''Thereupon came great outcry from 
newspapers, rising even to hysterical 
shrieking in some cases, great and natural 
wrath among the American people, and 
fault-finding from senators and represen- 
tatives. * * * 

"There was, undoubtedly, a certain 
but not very large percentage of short- 

181 



THE TRIUMPHS OF THE 

comings due to individual incapacity, 
which should have been rooted up with- 
out regard to personal sensibilities. But 
the fundamental fact was that the chief 
and predominant cause of all the failures, 
blunders, and needless suffering was a 
thoroughly bad system of military admin- 
istration. 

"At the outset of our war we had a bad 
system, and men laid the blame here and 
there for faults of system and organiza- 
tion which were really due to the narrow- 
ness and indifference of congress, of the 
newspaper press, and of the people nm- 
ning back over many years. Today* the 
system stands guilty of the blimders, de- 
lays and needless sufferings and deaths 
of the war, and war being over, reforms 
are resisted by patriots who have so lit- 
tle faith in the republic that they think 
a properly organized army of 100,000 men 
puts it in danger." 



^Written in 1899. 

183 



ROOSEVELT ADMINISTRATION 

Senator Lodge's severe but well de- 
served arraignment of the indifference of 
congress and people to the needs of the 
army prefaced a long list of mistakes of 
omission and commission in the conduct 
of the war with Spain. There were many 
that he did not refer to. The list of blun- 
ders made up the sum total of humilia- 
tion which the nation would like to for- 
get. Soldiers were sent to a tropical cli- 
mate in winter uniforms — or with khaki 
blouses and heavy flannel shirts. Medical 
stores w^ere incomplete. Railroad tracks 
at Tampa were blocked for miles with cars 
filled with supplies tightly shut by red 
tape at which officers gazed helplessly. 
There was no system for loading the trans- 
ports. Hospital ambulances were shipped 
— the body of the wagons in the hold of 
one steamer, the w^heels in the hold of 
another! There was no assignment of 
regiments to transports — or else several 
regiments would be assigned to one trans- 
port. Some of the transports were old 
and slow. Lighters and boats for disem- 

183 



THE TRIUMPHS OF THE 

barking men and supplies were forgotten. 

But why dwell longer on so painful a 
subject? Wlien Theodore Roosevelt be- 
came President the people of the United 
States looked to him to reorganize the 
army. He had served in the entire Cuban 
campaign. He had witnessed the humilia- 
tion as well as shared in the glory. He 
knew where the trouble lay — and all the 
people knew that he knew, and were con- 
fident that he would devote all the energy 
of his tireless nature to weeding out 
abuses and to remedy painfully apparent 
defects. 

The reorganization of the rotten, rusted, 
broken-do-\\Ti army machine was a task 
vrhich the American people expected 
Roosevelt to perform. He set about it in 
his usual prudent but vigorous way. He 
has kept at the task. Some patriots who 
never remove their eyes from the spoils 
of office show a disposition to find fault. 
They frequently raise the clamor that 
Roosevelt aspires to be the ''war lord" of 
the republic. They like to compare him 

184 



KOOSEVELT ADMINISTKATION 

to the Kaiser. They hint gloomily at a 
''military dictatorship." They even shud- 
der at the prospect of a nation of 80,000,- 
000 free citizens being ground beneath the 
heel of a ''military despot '^ who, with an 
army of 59^866 enlisted men, exclusive of 
Philippine constabulary, Indian scouts 
and the hospital corps, proposes to ride, 
cowboy fashion, with lariat in hand, over 
the liberties of the people ! 

It is scarcely necessary to insult either 
the President or the intelligence of the 
people by denying these absurd fears of 
partisan enemies. President Roosevelt is 
only doing with the army what the peo- 
ple themselves demanded he should do. 
President McKinley had begun the work 
of army reorganization immediately upon 
the close of the Spanish-American war. 
Roosevelt took up the work where McKin- 
ley, stricken by the hand of an assassin, 
was compelled to lay it down. He ac- 
cepted the duty, just as he has accepted 
all other responsibilities that came to him 
with the presidential office. 

185 



THE TRIUMPHS OF THE 

In his first message to congress Presi- 
dent Roosevelt urged upon congress the 
necessity for a thorough reorganization 
of the army. It is significant to note that 
he did not ask for a greater army, but a 
better one. He wrote : 

**It is not necessary to increase our 
army beyond its present size at this time. 
But it is necessary to keep it at the highest 
point of efficiency. The individual units, 
"who as officers and enlisted men compose 
this army are, we have good reason to be- 
lieve, at least as efficient as those of any 
other army in the entire world. It is our 
duty to see that their training is of a 
kind to insure the highest possible ex- 
pression of power to these units when act- 
ing in combination. 

*'The conditions of modern war are 
such as to make an infinitely heavier de- 
mand than ever before upon the individual 
character and capacity of the officer and 
enlisted man, and to make it far more dif- 
ficult for men to act together with effect. 
At present, fighting must be done in ex- 

186 




ETHAN ALLEN HITCHCOCK, 
Secretary of the Interior. 



ROOSEVELT ADMINISTRATION 

tended order, which means that each man 
must act for himself, and at the same 
time act in combination with others with 
whom he is no longer in the old-fashioned 
elboAV-to-elbow touch. Under such condi- 
tions a few men of the highest excellence 
are worth more than many men without 
the special skill which is only to be found 
as the result of special training applied 
to men of exceptional physique and mor- 
ale. But nowadays the most valuable 
fighting man and the most difficult to per- 
fect is the rifleman who is also a skillful 
and daring rider. 

**The American cavalryman, trained to 
manoeuvre and fight with equal facility on 
foot and on horseback, is the best type of 
soldier for general purposes to be found 
in the world. The ideal cavalryman of 
the present day is a man who can fight on 
foot as effectively as the best infantry- 
man, and who is in addition unsurpassed 
in the care and management of his horse. 

*'A general staff should be created. As 
for the present staff and supply depart- 

187 



THE TRIUMPHS OF THE 

ments, they should be filled by details 
from the line, the men so detailed return- 
ing after a while to their line duties. It 
is very undesirable to have the senior 
grades of the army composed of men who 
have come to fill the positions by the mere 
fact of seniority. A system should be 
adopted by which there shall be an elimi- 
nation, grade by grade, of those who seem 
imfit to render the best service in the 
next grade. Justice to the veterans of 
the civil war who are still in the army 
would seem to require that in the matter 
of retirements they be given the same 
privileges accorded to their comrades in 
the navy." 

Congress responded to President Roose- 
velt's request and passed the law creating 
the present General Staff. The change 
from the old to the new system was made 
so naturally that its immediate effect was 
scarcely noticeable. The army today, as 
the result of President Roosevelt's efforts, 
is governed by a staff of trained officers 
who owe their appointment to their recog- 

188 



ROOSEVELT ADMINISTRATION 

nized ability, not to tlie mere fact of their 
seniority in grade. 

The army owes another reform to Presi- 
dent Roosevelt. He had witnessed the 
painful, humiliating mistakes that had ac- 
companied the mobilization and transpor- 
tation of an army to Cuba. He had not 
only seen it but felt it. One of his first 
thoughts upon becoming commander-in- 
chief was to remedy the glaring defects — 
defects due solely to lack of training of 
officers and men. In his first message to 
congress he made the following recom- 
mendations, radical in the departure they- 
proposed from all past experience in the 
army. He wrote : 

**Our army is so small and so much' 
scattered that it is difficult to give the 
higher officers (as well as the lower offi- 
cers and the enlisted men) a chance to 
practice manoeuvres in mass and on com- 
paratively a large scale. In the time of 
need no amount of individual excellence 
would avail against the paralysis which 
would follow inability to work as a co- 

189 



THE TRIUMPHS OF THE 

herent whole, under skillful and daring 
leadership. The congress should provide 
means whereby it will be possible to have 
field exercises by at least a division of 
regulars, and if possible also a division 
of national guardsmen, once a year. 

''These exercises might take the form 
of field manoeuvres; or, if on the gulf 
coast, or the Pacific or Atlantic seaboard, 
or in the region of the Great Lakes, the 
army corps, when assembled, could be 
marched from some inland point to some 
point on the water, there embarked, dis- 
embarked, after a couple of days' jour- 
ney, at some other point, and again 
marched inland. Only by actual handling 
and providing for men in masses while 
they are marching, camping, embarking 
and disembarking, will it be possible to 
train the higher officers to perform their 
duties well and smoothly." 

The President's suggestion was ap- 
plauded by the entire country. The neces- 
sity was apparent and the means practi- 
\ cable. Congress provided the moans to 

100 



ROOSEVELT ADMINISTRATIOI^ 

carry out the suggestions to a limited ex- 
tent and for two years the field manoeuv- 
res of the army and the national guard 
regiments have taken place near Fort 
Riley, Kan. The exercises were absolute- 
ly unique in the history of the army in 
time of peace. They were witnessed by 
the trained military experts of Europe. 
Great Britain sent Ian Hamilton, one of 
its greatest generals, to study the man- 
oeuvres, and his report, coinciding with 
the reports of other foreign officers train- 
ed in the science and art of war, fully jus- 
tified the declaration made by Lord 
Wolseley, commander-in-chief of the Brit- 
ish army, to the effect that the army of 
the United States, except in point of size, 
is the best in the world. 

President Roosevelt has done much for 
the army. There is vigor in its adminis- 
tration where formerly there was senility 
and inefficiency. The officers work more 
thoroughly in harmony. There is more 
incentive to the younger officers to work 
harder in order to prove their efficiency, 

191 



THE TRIUMPHS OF THE 

for no longer does the paralyzing effects 
of the old regime of seniority hamper 
their efforts. What President Roosevelt 
has done for the army, he has done for the 
navy. The officers of the navy now study 
the problems of marine warfare — not in 
text books — but in actual practice. The 
naval manoeuvres off the Maine coast, in 
Long Island sound and off Culebra island, 
near Porto Rico, have taught naval offi- 
cers how to solve practical problems of at- 
tack and defense. 

And all this to satisfy the ambition of 
a president to be a "war lord," to enable 
him to satisfy a craving for the ''pomp 
and circumstance of glorious war?" Not 
so. Listen to what he says : 

*' Probably no other nation in the world 
is so anxious for peace as we are. There 
is not a single civilized power which has 
anything whatever to fear from aggres- 
siveness on our part. All we want is 
peace ; and toward this end we wish to be 
able to secure the same respect for our 
rights from others which we are eager 

192 



ROOSEVELT ADMINISTRATION 

and anxious to extend to their rights in 
return, to insure fair treatment to us 
commercially, and to guarantee the safety 
of the American people/' 



193 



THE TRIUMPHS OF THE 



CHAPTER IX. 

THE UNITED STATES: A WORLD 
POWER FOR PEACE. 

THE war with Spain made the United 
States a world power. In that strug- 
gle, brief as it was, the aegis of the 
Great Republic was extended to Porto 
Rico, the sentinel island of the Atlantic, 
and to the Philippines, at the very gates of 
Asia. Just as the ]\ronroe doctrine had 
made the United States the paramount 
power on the western hemisphere, the 
treaty of peace with Spain made the Great 
Republic the dominant force in the Pacific. 
No longer could the people of the United 
States boast of the splendid isolation of 
their republic. Their flag had crossed the 
western ocean — to stay. 

Call it the fortunes of war — call it ^Mani- 
fest Destiny — call it what you will — but 
from the day that the victorious armies 
and fleets of the Great Republic shattered 

194 



ROOSEVELT ADMINISTRATION 

the last remnants of Spain's once glorious 
empire in the Atlantic and in the Pacific, 
the United States became a world power — 
no longer to be ignored in the councils of 
the great nations of the earth. 

With the United States in possession of 
the Philippines the nations of Europe 
could no longer ignore the rights of the 
republic to a voice in the direction of Far 
Eastern affairs. Prior to the war with 
Spain Europe, recognizing the superior ad- 
vantages possessed by the United States, 
had been planning quietly but effectively 
to close the doors of the orient to the com- 
merce of America. China's interests were 
not consulted. England, Germany, France 
and Russia had practically divided that 
slumbering giant, the Chinese empire, 
among themselves. England had selected 
for her ''sphere of influence" the entire 
Yang-tse valley, stretching across the Yel- 
low Empire from Burma to the Pacific. 
France was conceded control of all of 
China south of the Yang-tse valley. Ger- 
many had taken possession of Shan Tung 

195 



THE TRIUMPHS OF THE 

and the northwest provinces, while Russia 
was establishing herself in Manchuria, 
with one hand outstretched toward Pekin 
itself where one day she hoped to make 
the greatest capital of the orient the seat 
of Muscovite power in the Far East. 

The United States was not consulted in 
this proposed dismemberment of an em- 
pire; but Dewey's guns conquered the 
Philippines and the United States became 
an Asiatic power, no longer to be snubbed 
and ignored. 

The powers of Europe did not welcome 
the United States to the council board of 
the Far East, but they admitted her, be- 
cause there was nothing else to do. The 
logic of the situation was with the Ameri- 
can government and they were prepared 
to submit and did submit to the inevitable. 

The United States took the first stop in 
the solution of the Far Eastern problem. 
In September, 1899, Secretary Hay in- 
structed the American representatives in 
England, France, Germany, Russia, Italy 
and Japan to intimate to those govern- 

196 



ROOSEVELT ADMINISTRATION 

ments the apprehension felt by the United 
States government of the danger of com- 
plications arising between the powers that 
might imperil the rights assured to the 
United States by treaty. 

In the negotiation thus begun, the Euro- 
pean governments concerned were warned 
that the government of the United States 
would not commit itself to any recognition 
of exclusive rights of any power within or 
control over any portion of the Chinese 
empire under the agreements recently 
made by which Great Britain, Germany 
and Russia claimed and conceded to each 
other the possession of spheres of influence 
or interest. 

Hoping to retain China as an open mar- 
ket for the world's commerce, the United 
States requested the powers claiming 
spheres of influence in China to declare 
their intentions with regard to the treat- 
ment of foreign trade in those spheres and 
asked from each a declaration to the ef- 
fect that it would in no wise interfere with 

197 



THE TRIUMPHS OF THE 

any treaty port or vested interest of the 
United States. 

In other words the United States, con- 
scious of its new born powers, notified the 
nations of Europe that they would not be 
permitted to close the ports of China to 
the trade and commerce of the United 
States. As that was just what the nations 
of Europe had been planning to do the 
demands of the United States came as an 
unexpected blow. Again, the logic of the 
situation was with the United States and 
the European powers acquiesced. England 
was the first to make the pledge exacted by 
the United States ; Germany followed, and 
then Russia, France, Italy and Japan, in 
the order named. The United States on 
March 20, 1900, accepted the pledges of 
the powers to maintain the open door in 
China, at the same time announcing that 
the pledges would be considered irrevo- 
cable. 

Thus by a single bold stroke of diplo- 
macy the United States made nugatory all 
of Europe's carefully planned schemes for 

198 



ROOSEVELT ADMINISTRATION 

the partition of China by a system of 
spheres of influence. A sphere of influence 
in which the United States had secured 
equal rights, not only for herself but for 
all the world, was of little or no value. 

Vfith her added dignity as a world 
power for peace the United States has, 
since the close of the war with Spain, built 
a navy that is excelled in strength by the 
navies of only Great Britain and France. 
The United States fought the war with 
Spain with only eight battleships and two 
armored cruisers. Now we have twenty- 
five of the greatest battleships of the 
world in commission and building and ten 
powerful cruisers. Only the two powers 
referred to have more, and the United 
States is building ships of the line of battle 
more rapidly than any other nation. With a 
great naval base in the Philippines and an- 
other in the Hawaiian islands, both forti- 
fied and equipped, the American naxy is 
in a position to dominate the Pacific. With 
the Panama canal uniting the waters of the 
Atlantic and the Pacific, fortified at each 

199 



THE TRIUMPHS OF THE 

end, the naval power of the United States 
is further enabled to guard American com- 
merce and to control the greatest ocean 
highway between the Old World and the 
Far East. With two naval bases on the 
island of Cuba and two at Porto Rico the 
United States dominates the West Indies 
and the Caribbean Sea. 

No other nation, Great Britain alone ex- 
cepted, has in its hands so many elements 
of naval strength. With a powerful navy, 
strong enough to protect American shores 
at home and in Asia, and strong enough to 
protect American rights and American in- 
terests in any quarter of the globe, is it 
any wonder that the nations of Europe, 
whose horizons are clouded by the smoke 
of battle fleets and whose monarchs are 
hedged about with bayonets, are quick to 
recognize the United States as a world 
power? The nations of Europe recognize 
one material fact in the universe — force. 

And yet, Europe has come to recognize 
that the Ignited States is a world power — 
not for the dismemberment of impassive 

200 



ROOSEVELT ADMINISTRATION 

empires — not for conquest — but for peace^ 
The idea of a world power for peace is a 
new one in the text book of old world 
polities. 

The influence and power of the United 
States in the maintenance of the world's 
peace has become a recognized factor in 
international politics. The credit for this 
is due largely to Theodore Roosevelt. His 
messages to congress and his public ad- 
dresses since he became president, have- 
made him the recognized advocate of peace 
among the nations of the earth. He has^. 
insisted that the United States should sup- 
ply herself with that power by which alone 
a nation may enforce its rights and protect 
its interests. But he has insisted in every 
public utterance that only by the acquire- 
ment of such naval power can the United 
States hope to stand among the nations of 
the earth fearless and respected. 

In his first message to congress he wrote 
these words: 

' ' The work of upbuilding the navy must 
be steadily continued. No one point of our 

201 



THE TKIUMPHS OF THE 

policy, foreign or domestic, is more im- 
portant than this to the honor and material 
welfare, and above all to the peace of our 
nation in the future. Whether we desire 
it or not, we must henceforth recognize 
that we have international duties no less 
than international rights. 

* ' So far from being in any way a provo- 
cation to war, an adequate and highly 
trained navy is the best guaranty against 
war, the cheapest and most effective peace 
insurance. The cost of building and main- 
taining such a navy represents the very 
lightest premium for insuring peace which 
this nation can possibly pay. 

"Probably no other great nation in the 
world is so anxious for peace as we are. 
There is not a single civilized power which 
has anything to fear from aggressiveness 
on our part. All we want is peace; and 
toward this end we wish to be able to secure 
the same respect for our rights from others 
which we are eager and anxious to extend 
to their rights in return, to insure fair 

202 



ROOSEVELT ADMINISTRATION 

treatment to us commercially and to guar- 
antee the safety of the American people. 

* ' Our people intend to abide by the Mon- 
roe Doctrine, and to insist upon it as the 
one sure means of securing the peace of 
the western hemisphere. The navy offers 
us the only means of making our insistence 
upon the Monroe Doctrine anything but a 
subject of derision to whatever nation 
chooses to disregard it. 

*'We desire the peace which comes as of 
right to the just man armed ; not the peace 
granted on terms of ignominy to the craven 
and the weakling.'* 

In his message to the Fifty-Seventh Con- 
gress, President Roosevelt again referred 
to the United States as a power for peace, 
saying: 

'*As a people we have played a large 
part in the world, and we are bent upon 
making our future even larger than the 
past. In particular, the events of the last 
four years have definitely decided, for woe 
or for weal, that our place must be great 
among the nations. We may either fail 

203 



THE TRIUMPHS OF THE 

greatly or succeed greatly, but we cannot 
avoid the endeavor from which either great 
failure or great success must come. Even 
if we would, we cannot play a small part. 
If we should try, all that would follow 
would be that we should play a large part 
ignobly and shamefully. 

''There is not a cloud on the horizon at 
present. There seems not the slightest 
chance of trouble with a foreign power. 
"We most earnestly hope that this state of 
things may continue; and the way to in- 
sure its continuance is to provide for a 
thoroughly efficient navy. The refusal to 
maintain such a navy wourd invite trouble, 
and if trouble came would insure disaster. 
Fatuous self-complacency or vanity, or 
shortsightedness in refusing to prepare for 
danger, is both foolish and wicked in such 
a nation as ours and past experience has 
shown that such fatuity in refusing to 
recognize or prepare for any crisis in ad- 
vance, is usually succeeded by mad panic 
of hysterical fear, once the crisis has actu- 
ally arrived." 

204 



ROOSEVELT ADMINISTRATION 

Outside of his messages to Congress, 
President Roosevelt has in many pubkc ad- 
dresses urged the rapidly growing power 
of the United States as a factor in world 
peace. In an address at a dinner given by 
the New York Chamber of Commerce on 
Nov. 11, 1902, he made the following nota- 
ble utterance: 

'^With the great powers of the world we 
desire no rivalry that is not honorable to 
both parties. We wish them well. We be- 
lieve that the trend of the modern spirit is 
ever stronger toward peace, not war; to- 
ward friendship, not hostility, as the nor- 
mal international attitude. We are glad, 
indeed, that we are on good terms with all 
the other peoples of mankind, and no effort 
on our part shall be spared to secure a 
continuance of these relations. 

''And remember, gentlemen, that we 
shall be a potent factor for peace largely 
in proportion to the way in which we make 
it evident that our attitude is due, not to 
weakness, not to inability to defend our- 
selves, but to a genuine repugnance to 

305 



THE TRIUMPHS OF THE 

vvronfjdoing, a <:?eninne desire for self- 
respecting friendship with our neighbor. 

"The voice of the weakling or the 
craven counts for nothing when he clamors 
for peace, but the voice of the just man 
armed is potent. We need to keep in a 
condition of preparedness, especially as re- 
gards the navy, not because we want war, 
but because we desire to stand with those 
whose plea for peace is listened to with 
respectful attention.'^ 

With the recognition of the United 
States as a world power has come also a 
more general recognition by the great na- 
tions of Europe of the Monroe Doctrine. 
Probably no president of the United States 
has said more in messages to Congress or in 
public addresses to emphasize the Ameri- 
can belief in the Doctrine enunciated by 
Monroe in 1824, than Theodore Roosevelt. 
He has enabled the nations of Europe to 
more clearly understand the famous 
American principle and he has, it may be 
said, compelled a more thorough recogni- 
tion of its full force and effect. The story 

206 



ROOSEVELT ADMINISTRATION 

of the Venezuelan affair, given elsewhere 
in these pages, contains the history of the 
last attempt that will ever be made by a 
combination of European governments to 
test the temper of the American people on 
the question of the Monroe Doctrine. 
President Roosevelt's part in the events 
which threatened for a brief time to plunge 
a South American state into war with 
Europe is sufficiently set forth. Those 
events brought from him one of the most 
notable public addresses made by him dur- 
ing his administration. Addressing a great 
meeting in Chicago, on April 2, 1903, he 
said in part : 

* ' Ever since the time when we definitely 
extended our boundaries to the Pacific and 
southward to the gulf, since the time when 
the old Spanish and Portuguese colonies to 
the south of us asserted their independ- 
ence, our nation has insisted that because 
of its primacy in strength among the na- 
tions in the Western Hemisphere it has cer- 
tain duties and responsibilities which 
oblige it to take a leading part thereon. 

207 



THE TRIUMPHS OF THE 

''We hold that our interests in this 
hemisphere are greater than those of any 
European power possibly can be, and that 
our duty to ourselves and to the weaker 
republics who are our neighbors requires 
us to see that none of the great military 
powers from across the seas shall encroach 
upon the territory of the American repub- 
lics, or acquire control thereover. * * * 

"The Monroe Doctrine is not interna- 
tional law, and though I think it may one 
day become such, this is not necessary as 
long as it remains a cardinal feature of our 
foreign policy and as long as we possess 
both the will and the strength to make it 
effective. 

"This last point, my fellow citizens, is 
all important, and is one which as a people 
we can never afford to forget. 

"I believe in the Monroe Doctrine with 
all my heart and soul ; I am convinced that 
the immense majority of our fellow-coun- 
trymen so believe in it; but I would in- 
finitely prefer to see us abandon it than to 
see us put it forward and bluster about it, 

206 



ROOSEVELT ADMINISTRATION 

and yet fail to build up the efficient fight- 
ing strength which in the last resort can 
alone make it respected by any strong for- 
eign power whose interest it may ever hap- 
pen to be to violate it. 

"Boasting and blustering are as objec- 
tionable among nations as among individ- 
uals, and the public men of a great nation 
owe it to their sense of national self-respect 
to speak courteously of foreign powers, 
just as a brave and self-respecting man 
treats all around him courteously. But, 
though to boast is bad, and causelessly to 
insult another, worse, yet worse than all is 
it to be guilty of boasting, even without 
insult, and when called to the proof to be 
unable to make such boasting good. 

*' There is a homely old adage which 
rins : ' If you speak softly and carry a big 
sti-.k you will go far.' If the American 
na:ion will speak softly and yet build and 
ke^ at a pitch of the highest training, a 
tho:'oughly efficient navy, the Monroe Doc- 
triie will go far." 



309 



JUN 23 1904 



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Hill i 
liliiilllilliillilliii 



